Mission (almost) Impossible: Trying to fly stranded South Africans back home

Source: Daily Maverick, 13/07/2020

So they’re quick to criticise any delays or other problems. And
there have been a heap of those. On Wednesday 8 July, Myburgh was
bracing himself for another torrent of abuse on social media. His
Boeing 767 aircraft bringing 105 South Africans and 65 Zimbabweans
home from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Wuhan, China, was supposed to
have been arriving in Johannesburg and Harare the next day.
But a combination of endless bureaucracy and an oil leak in the
left engine postponed the flight for several more days, probably
until 15 July. Or not.
Myburgh was talking from Toronto which is where he now lives and
runs an airline called Maple Aviation from his dining room table.
He recently leased the Boeing 767 from Air Zimbabwe for his rescue
missions. That means the aircraft comes with the official backing
of the Zimbabwean government.
That may not seem like such a blessing. But where he’s currently
flying â€` particularly in China â€` it’s a plus because of the
closeness of the Chinese and Zimbabwean governments. Families of
South Africans due to return on Myburgh’s repatriation flight
remarked that it was the Zimbabwean embassy in China, not the
South African one, that was helping them with their paperwork and
other arrangements.
Myburgh says as an aircraft operator his responsibilities usually
extend only as far as dealing with the foreign civil aviation
authority to get permission to land. But in the case of the Covid-
19 crisis, many other considerations come into play.
For one, he had originally hoped to land in Beijing, rather than
Wuhan. But because of the recent spike of Covid-19 cases in the
capital, the Chinese authorities would only let him land in the
city of Wuhan â€` ironically, the original epicentre of the
pandemic.
That meant the South Africans and Zimbabweans stuck in China for
many months, most of whom are in Beijing, would have to get to
Wuhan. For one of them, this created a particular problem. Josh
Doman is a young South African who has been in detention in
Beijing since February because his visa expired. His two-week
sentence of detention should have ended long ago but the Chinese
authorities would only free him if he flew straight out of China.
They wouldn’t allow him to stop over anywhere in the country â€`
such as Wuhan. This requirement was also related to the new wave
of Covid-19 infections in Beijing and the fear that Josh might
carry the virus to Wuhan.
The hope of getting her son back on the Maple Aviation flight and
then that hope being dashed by the inflexible bureaucracy added
another yet layer of distress â€` another steep dive on the
emotional roller coaster ride which his mother, Cynthia Immelman,
has lived through for the past four months.
Then SAA announced a repatriation flight from Beijing on 17 June
and about 200 stranded South Africans registered for that. But
that flight was quietly cancelled, without any real explanation.
It started on February 18 when Josh handed himself over to Chinese
authorities because his visa had expired. He was given a sentence
of two weeks’ detention.
He could have left detention from March 4 if a flight from Beijing
directly out of China was possible. There was an Ethiopian
Airlines flight on 25 March â€` prior to lockdown â€` and she bought
Josh a ticket on that flight for over R26,000. But then the SA
embassy in Beijing said it had been cancelled.
Her hopes â€` and those of hundreds of other South Africans stranded
in China â€` were raised again when the South African consulates in
Beijing and Shanghai told them that a KLM flight to South Africa
would depart from Beijing on 27 April. But this flight didn’t
materialise. Then there was some suggestion from the consulates of
a Cathay Pacific flight on 29 April. That one also evaporated.
Then SAA announced a repatriation flight from Beijing on 17 June
and about 200 stranded South Africans registered for that. But
that flight was quietly cancelled, without any real explanation.
Three days later, an Air China flight arranged by the Chinese
government brought home 204 South African students who had been
stranded in China. This had been arranged by the South African
education department with the Chinese government, which had
arranged the flight to take home its own citizens stuck in South
Africa.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco)
said there was no room on this flight for Josh or many other
stranded South Africans, including many teachers who were no
longer being paid. They were not told about the flight until after
it had happened.
By then Immelman and the many others still languishing in China
realised their only hope was to arrange their own private charter.
They contacted Myburgh. He offered two flights, Immelman said. One
would require 23 South Africans to leave Guangzhou on 24 June on
an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur where he would collect them and
take them home. His second flight would leave on 4 July with the
rest of the South Africans.
Myburgh explained to his passengers on 7 July that the Wuhan
departure had been delayed by a day to try to get clearance for
Josh to get to Wuhan and embark on the flight. Then, he told Daily
Maverick, there was a further delay caused by the SA embassy not
getting exit permits to the South Africans in time.
The Guangzhou departure became an epic within an epic. Air Asia
wouldn’t allow them to board, despite them having all necessary
permissions from Dirco.
That night they slept where they could in the airport. Among them
was a baby, two pregnant women, some with chronic illness, quite a
few with no money.
After a crowd-funding effort by friends and family, enough money
was found to accommodate them in a hotel for 11 days and buy
essential medicines while they waited for another charter flight
to collect them.
They then heard that Maple Aviation had received permission to fly
from Wuhan on 7 July, because the Chinese had denied him
permission to land in Beijing â€` where the second wave of Covid-19
had erupted.
On July 6, the group of 23 in Guangzhou packed and got on a train
for Wuhan. But their saga was far from over still.
Myburgh explained to his passengers on 7 July that the Wuhan
departure had been delayed by a day to try to get clearance for
Josh to get to Wuhan and embark on the flight. Then, he told Daily
Maverick, there was a further delay caused by the SA embassy not
getting exit permits to the South Africans in time.
Next, he ran into what you could call anti-aircraft flak from
South African bureaucracy. The flight had already left its
original departure point, Bangkok, on its first leg to Islamabad,
to collect some South Africans there, before making its way to
Wuhan to fetch the bigger group there.
Then he heard that Natjoints â€` the powerful National Joint
Operational and Intelligence Structure, which decides who may fly
where during the coronavirus shutdown â€` had rejected his list of
passengers from Pakistan. They didn’t say why. The plane returned
to Bangkok and then the oil leak in the engine was discovered. He
ordered a new engine which Ethiopian Airlines was supposed to be
delivering, but that was also delayed by customs problems.
On Thursday, the passengers at Bangkok airport were bussed to a
hotel to stay at his expense â€` supposedly for a night. He also
covered the accommodation of the Guangzhou group, Daily Maverick
was told.
But the engine problem was worse than it looked at first and it
now seems the flight will only depart on 14 or 15 July.
More abuse on social media for Myburgh expected
“They take you out on Facebook, WhatsApp, wherever,” he says.
Some don’t like having to pay $1,000 (then R17,500) for the
flight back to South Africa, which he says is cheap, especially
considering the effort he has had to make to get these flights off
the ground. In this case, he says that ticket price was only
possible because he arranged to fly seafarers on the outward leg
of the round-trip, to replace crews on cruise ships stuck in Kuala
Lumpur and elsewhere.
The tickets for those seafarers, which were paid for by the cruise
ship companies, lowered the price of the tickets for the returning
passengers. Myburgh said if he had to fly an empty aircraft to
Wuhan to collect the South Africans and Zimbabweans, their tickets
would have cost around $3,500 each.
Some of his passengers discovered there is another Maple Aviation
based in Nigeria. “So they immediately assumed â€` ‘Nigerian, must
be a scam’. I say, listen to my accent. I’m a boertjie. I won’t
take your money to buy whisky. I’ll get you home.
“I got this plane originally because my old high school headmaster
got stuck in Myanmar in May and asked me to help him. There were
eight South Africans there who had been looking at temples and so
on.
“The only way to get him out was to find others to get out also.”
And then he struck on the plight of the seafarers on the cruise
ships, hundreds of whom have been stuck on their vessels for many
months, some of them no longer being paid.
“It was absolute chaos There were seafarers committing suicide on
those ships, jumping overboard,” Myburgh said.
So that’s how he developed his formula of flying seafarers one way
and bringing back stranded locals the other way. When the group in
China heard about him, they “bombarded” him for help.
They were particularly desperate and angry because SAA had let
them down on that flight in June which never happened.
But Myburgh said he was sure the SAA flight was, like his flight
from Beijing, cancelled because China wouldn’t give SAA clearance
to land there. The difference is that SAA was committed to Beijing
airport because of its historic infrastructure there, whereas he
could more easily divert to Wuhan.
Meanwhile, when Cynthia Immelman heard the Wuhan flight had been
delayed, she sensed an opportunity to try to get Josh to Wuhan
before the new departure date. She had heard the Chinese
authorities might relax their insistence on him flying straight
out of China with no internal stop.
But the Chinese authorities weren’t budging. They had heard that
Maple Aviation had scheduled another repatriation flight for South
Africans and Zimbabweans out of the southern city of Guangzhou on
July 17. For some reason they seemed more amenable to putting him
on that flight.
Then Myburgh informed her late last week that the Guangzhou flight
had also been postponed, until 23 July.
As he explained to Daily Maverick, the Guangzhou departure was
part of a longer itinerary that was originally supposed to depart
from Harare and Johannesburg on 10 July and take in Kuala Lumpur,
Manila, Hanoi, Guangzhou, Kathmandu, Delhi, and then back to
Johannesburg and Harare.
On the Kuala Lumpur-Guangzhou leg, he would be repatriating 203
stranded Chinese seafarers and picking up what he hoped would be
the last batch of South Africans stranded in China. These
seafarers, according to his formula, would be making the tickets
more affordable for the South Africans and Zimbabweans going home.
He had already begun informing them to make their way to
Guangzhou.
For Myburgh, trying to help Immelman and all his other passengers
and their families to navigate Chinese and South African
bureaucracy as well as intercontinental airwaves has become his
new normal.
But then he told Josh’s family that the Chinese had told him that
they had no quarantine accommodation in Guangzhou for the
seafarers on 17 July, only on 23 July.
Immelman began to despair that the Guangzhou flight might be
delayed yet again, perhaps indefinitely. On Saturday 12 July she
appealed to Dirco officials to take advantage of the delay in the
Wuhan flight to try to persuade the Chinese authorities to get
Josh from Beijing to Wuhan before 15 July.
She also told them she had heard that a South African Airways
cargo flight would be leaving Beijing, also on July 15, and asked
if Josh could be put on that flight â€` which would avoid any
Chinese reservations about moving him to Wuhan before he left
China.
Immelman reminded the Dirco officials that their minister, Naledi
Pandor, had said at her last press conference that the government
was keeping down the costs of repatriating South Africans by
asking airlines carrying cargo to allow them to travel in their
passenger cabins.

She also pointed out that Guangzhou flight was originally meant to
leave from Beijing on 4 July and that the date had kept changing.
“I’m sure you can understand that I don’t have much faith that
this will indeed happen on the 23rd, hence my pleas to bring
Joshua home on either the Wuhan flight or the SAA cargo flight.”
So far she has just received a “noted” from Dirco.

For Myburgh, trying to help Immelman and all his other passengers
and their families to navigate Chinese and South African
bureaucracy as well as intercontinental airwaves has become his
new normal.
“From being just an aircraft operator before, I now have to get
involved in the paperwork of each of my passengers and liaise with
the embassy to ensure the passengers have everything they need to
get out,” he says.
“I take calls every five minutes from distressed mothers and
fathers. And I don’t have a massive staff. It’s basically just me
at my dining room table with my computer in Toronto,” he said.
But he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s resigned not only to being
maligned, but to being constantly harassed. That’s aviation in
the time of plague.
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