{{The DA will ask Parliament’s defence joint standing committee to schedule a meeting to discuss the “crisis” in the SA Air Force (SAAF), spokesperson David Maynier said on Wednesday.}}<\/p>\n
He was responding to a news report that 18 Agusta A109 helicopters had been grounded because there was no money to operate them.<\/p>\n
“The Minister of Defence and Military Veterans Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula must explain why things have been allowed to deteriorate to the extent that the SAAF Agusta A109 light utility helicopters have effectively been grounded,” the DA MP said.<\/p>\n
The aircraft were purchased at a cost of close to R2bn as part of the controversial arms deal.<\/p>\n
“The budget for the SAAF\u2019s ‘helicopter capability’ has been slashed from R915m in 2012\/13 to R769m in 2013\/14,” Maynier said.<\/p>\n
“Because of this only 71 flying hours have reportedly been allocated to the operational fleet of approximately 20 Agusta A109 helicopters.”<\/p>\n
This meant the helicopter pilots could lose their qualifications as a result of not being able to fly the minimum number of hours needed.<\/p>\n
“Ironically, there seems to be no shortage of funds to transport VIPs -including President Jacob Zuma and the minister – on helicopters operated by the SAAF,” said Maynier.<\/p>\n
The cost of flying VIP’s since 2009 stood at at least R50m.<\/p>\n
“The SAAF are in danger of being reduced to an airborne taxi service for VIPs.”<\/p>\n
News24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The DA will ask Parliament’s defence joint standing committee to schedule a meeting to discuss the “crisis” in the SA Air Force (SAAF), spokesperson David Maynier said on Wednesday.}} He was responding to a news report that 18 Agusta A109 helicopters had been grounded because there was no money to operate them. “The Minister of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9310"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9310"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}