Cape Town - The South African Air Force has been taken to task by MPs after Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe missed his Finland leg of a recent trip to the Nordic countries because of aircraft technical problems.
Reports also claimed that Motlanthe's rented aircraft had made an emergency landing in New Zealand last month. But the South African National Defence Force has since denied stories of the emergency landing.
On Thursday, an Air Force delegation, led by the Chief of the Air Force, Lieutenant General Carlo Gagiano was questioned on the outsourced aircraft for Motlanthe by the Joint Standing Committee on Defence.
The delegation had come to Parliament to make presentations on progress made around transformation.
The committee asked why the Deputy President's aircraft got "stuck twice recently". The MPs also asked why the Air Force continued to do business with the company providing the plane - ExecuJet- given recent problems.
Due to time constraints on the part of the committee, Gagiano could not respond to the questions but was told to get the matter sorted out.
Gagiano told media following the meeting that the aircraft - Global Express - was the best for the job in terms of range of travel and capacity.
He said while they had provided requirements for renting out the aircraft, it was outsourced for a year by the National Treasury through a tender process.
Gagiano said the company's other aircraft for carrying principals, their eight-year-old Boeing 737 was in a "big service" for three months.
He said that another alternative, the Falcon 900, aged 26, lacked capacity, highlighting that the aircraft only carried eight people and had "tight" sleeping space for long haul trips.
Gagiano said that the best option was for South Africa to have its own VIP planes.
Again, in such a scenario, he said, they still needed to outsource other planes for use as backup
