Tourism minister Patricia De Lille was caught in the mayhem at O.R. Tambo International Airport on Monday. [Picture: via News24]
Tourism minister Patricia De Lille was among a number of passengers stranded at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport on Monday. Flights were delayed due to refuelling challenges.
“This is a disaster,” said De Lille in an interview with Newzroom Afrika on Tuesday morning. She claimed she sat on a plane for “more than an hour” as they waited for a staircase to arrive.
As stranded passengers waited for answers, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), which operates nine of South Africa’s airports, said aircraft were experiencing challenges refuelling.
It has since confirmed that operations have returned to normal.
But De Lille said she would speak to the minister of transport, Barbara Creecy, as it was clear the airport was affected by “poor maintenance” and people deserved apologies.
“People miss connecting flights. Some people have been, for the whole year, saving up money to go on a decent holiday. [It] shows that there’s definitely poor maintenance at the airport,” she said.
“Even if you can’t predict where something is going to break, you need to have a contingency plan in place. This is an international airport where thousands of people cross through on a daily basis. They should tell us when last did they maintain that valve and make sure that everything is working.
“I will certainly be raising this with the minister of transport to make sure that we prevent this because this is the key season for us, the holiday season, and we should really apologise to all of those travellers for what they went through yesterday,” she added.
