Staff shortages at South Africa’s Air Traffic & Navigation Services caused major disruptions as many travellers made their way home after the festive season. Google search traffic for Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmaspeaked around 24 December 2025 – with South Africa ranking at 35 out of 44 regions to search for the term. A week and a bit later, on Sunday, 4 January 2026, you could bet that many South African families stranded at OR Tambo International Airport wished they had taken the late singer’s words to heart.
To be fair to the nation’s Air Traffic & Navigation Services (ATNS), given the extent of the operational crisis a year ago, the fallout from just one day of hell is a relatively positive sign. It is a contradiction that domestic carriers are not allowing to slide. Airlink, the country’s largest independent regional airline, offered a far more scathing assessment of the Sunday chaos.
In a direct rebuttal of the weather narrative, the airline laid the blame squarely on management failures. “The delays stem from the Air Traffic Navigation Service’s failure to ensure it has sufficient staff to accommodate and manage the normal scheduled traffic,” the airline said in a statement released on Sunday evening. More concerning for frequent flyers is Airlink’s revelation on the “invisible infrastructure” – the data and regulations that keep planes in the sky.
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