Safair Hercules to the Rescue!

Contributed by Koenie van der Walt

Over the years Safair has always excelled during time of crisis – sometimes under extremely challenging and dangerous conditions, but always completing every operation professionally.

The political climate in Southern Africa during the eighties and early nineties was very uncertain and volatile. During this period Safair was often called upon by the international community at very short notice to assist with various operations.

Early one morning I received a telephone call from the Department of Foreign Affairs who had been contacted by the French Government with need to mobilise a Hercules to be dispatched to Moroni, the capital of the Comoros. We were familiar with the Comoros, having flown many flights to Moroni, with loads of building equipment and material for the Sun International Hotels that were built at the time. It wasn’t a big deal.

The difference with this flight though was that it would fly empty to Moroni and bring back passengers to Johannesburg who had to connect to the Union de Transports Aériens (UTA), service to Paris from Johannesburg that same evening. Some of the conditions were that we had to carry sufficient fuel from Johannesburg to Moroni and back to Johannesburg since there was no fuel available at Moroni. Another condition was that it had to be an all male crew, so our female cabin attendants could not be on the flight as with our normal passenger flights.

Fortunately one of the Hercs had the long range pylon tanks fitted and had been operating with them for a while. The Flight Planning Department quickly did the sector analysis and all was found to be in order to carry round-trip fuel.

The standby crew, plus additional crew were called in and the Herc departed shortly thereafter from Johannesburg for Moroni. The Herc returned to Johannesburg in the late afternoon with none other than Colonel Bob Dennard, the well known and sometimes infamous, French soldier and mercenary with his group of other mercenaries for onward travel to Paris.

Once again, another successful Hercules mission carried out professionally by a dedicated and passionate Safair team!

During the transitional peace period leading up to the Angolan elections, after many years of civilian war in Angola, Safair was once again called upon by the broader international community to come to the rescue. The peace process had been violated with skirmishes which broke out in Luanda between the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) and The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).

The South African Government, via the Department of Foreign Affairs, was called upon by many different Governments, who had diplomatic staff based in Luanda, to assist with the immediate evacuation of their staff.

The different Safair departments got together to plan this evacuation operation. Insurance underwriters in London were advised about the situation and asked for insurance cover to send an aircraft in to collect these people. Permission was approved by the underwriters to land in Luanda, with the explicit condition that we be on the ground for a maximum of only three hours per flight. The South African Aviation Authority (then the SADCA) was informed and the Director of the immediately gave approval for the operation to bring back the diplomatic personnel, subject to all the existing aircraft configurations and crew regulations being conformed to.

At the time we only had one Herc available which departed empty form Johannesburg for Luanda. We also had ZS-LSH, a Safair Boeing 707 which was doing a commercial charter from Johannesburg to Entebbe. We managed to ferry that aircraft across to Luanda to collect the remaining stranded people.

I clearly remember the Friday afternoon at Waterkloof Air Force Base proudly watching the flights arrive. The Boeing 707 came in first, followed by the Hercules. Both landed safely with full loads of passengers along with a few dogs and cats.

Naturally the different diplomatic personnel from Luanda were relieved to be safe in South Africa, but also sad having to leave so many local staff and possessions behind in Angola. The Department of Foreign Affairs as well as their international counterparts were highly complimentary towards Safair for this monumental exercise carried out with distinction.