DA seeks transparency over SAA’s vanity vaccine flight to Brussels
26 February 2021
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will submit a parliamentary question to Pravin Gordhan, the Minister of Public Enterprises, in order to obtain full details of the costs and reasons for the use of a massive SAA jetliner to fly to Brussels to collect a very small consignment of apparently only 80 000 Covid-19 vaccine doses.
It would clearly have been considerably cheaper to use the services of a normal commercial freight carrier from Brussels than the estimated cost of some R5.5 million of sending an empty jetliner all the way to Belgium and to return with a payload that could apparently be carried in a one-ton bakkie.
Whilst Nonny Mashika, Deputy Director-General for Aviation at the Department of Public Enterprises, has apparently claimed that the flight to Brussels was carrying freight it seems that this freight was not of a commercial nature and consisted of spare parts for the aircraft being used in order to avoid delays if the aircraft needs repairs en route or in Brussels.
This flight clearly has two main purposes: