The South African component of the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope programme had become a major "headache" for the South African aviation sector, Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS) executive manager Jeoffrey Matshoba pointed out in his presentation to the Commercial Aviation Association of Southern Africa Commercial Aviation Symposium on Tuesday. "We did not realise the impact it would have on aviation," he said.
The Cape Town-Johannesburg air route is the 12th busiest air route in the world, he highlighted. And all the domestic Gauteng-Cape Town air routes overfly the SKA reservation in the Karoo region in the Northern Cape province.
It was a requirement of the SKA that no air routes pass over its sites. Consequently, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) was adamant that the ATNS move these air traffic routes.
"We have to redesign those routes," he stated. They will all have to be shifted eastwards, to pass the SKA reservation.
But moving the air routes would increase the distance the airliners have to fly. This will increase their fuel consumption and so their costs. These increased costs will come to just over R2-million a year, reported Matshoba.
The aviation industry, he averred, had to convince the DST that there was a technical solution to the problem. This would allow the SKA and aviation to co-exist.