Swakopmund Municipality fails in its bid to get airport back

AN attempt by the Swakopmund Municipality to get the coastal town’s struggling airport back under its own control failed in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.

According to the Swakopmund Municipality, the agreement in terms of which Swakopmund Airfield CC has been leasing the town’s aerodrome from the Municipality since the start of December 1999 expired at the end of last month.With Swakopmund Airfield CC, of which businessman Brian Roos is the sole member, however claiming that the lease agreement has been extended to the end of August 2015, and the Municipality denying that an agreement extending the lease has ever been signed, the Municipality yesterday tried to get a court order in the High Court to have Swakopmund Airfield CC evicted from the aerodrome with immediate effect.It did not succeed, with Acting Judge John Manyarara not persuaded that the case that was filed by the Municipality on November 9 warranted being heard on an urgent basis. Acting Judge Manyarara struck the case from the court roll and ordered the Municipality to pay the legal costs of Roos and his close corporation.Earlier this year pilots and air operators using the Swakopmund Airport staged a public protest at the town to demand that the airport be removed from Roos’s control.Roos got control of the airport after he took over the company that was leasing the airport following the death of the company’s owner, Danie van der Merwe, in a helicopter accident in August 2005.Van der Merwe already had the main runway of the airport upgraded by having it tarred.That attempt to upgrade the airport has however not turned out as planned, as the tarred runway has started to break up. This resulted in the runway being closed by the Directorate of Civil Aviation on May 29 this year.Since then, pilots using the airport have had to make use of a shorter runway at the aerodrome. With the use of that runway, though, aircraft landing at or taking off from the airport experience problems with crosswinds when the wind is blowing from the west – as it does most of the time at the coast – the municipality is claiming in the case it filed with the High Court.With the close of the airport’s main runway, the only runway that was equipped for night operations is no longer available. This means that no emergency medical evacuation flights can take place from the airport any more.According to the Municipality, Swakopmund Airfield CC was obliged to maintain the airport in a proper and working condition.Swakopmund airfield CC, though, is claiming that it received ‘inherently defective runways’ from the Municipality and that it is the Municipality that is obliged to repair the closed runway.To now make such a claim about ‘inherently defective runways’ almost 10 years after the start of the lease agreement ‘is not only preposterous but also clearly a feeble attempt to justify (Swakopmund Airfield CC’s) breach of its maintenance obligations during the existence of the lease,’ the Municipality is charging in documents filed with the court.Susan Vivier, representing the Municipality, argued yesterday that the case was urgent because lives and property were potentially in danger due to the situation at the airport.’The point is the airport is not safe and it cannot deal with emergencies in the current state that it is,’ she told the court.If the case was not heard as a matter of urgency, the Municipality would have to wait six to eight months before it might get a place on the court roll to have the case heard in the normal course, Vivier said.Johannesburg senior counsel Lötter Wepener, representing Swakopmund Airfield CC, told the court that the Municipality knew since 2006 already that his client was claiming it had a right to remain in possession of the airport until August 31 2015. In February this year his client also informed the Municipality that in its view the lease was running until the end of August 2015, he said.The Municipality however waited until after the end of October before it launched legal proceedings in an attempt to get his clients evicted from the airport, Wepener said.’If ever I have seen a self-created urgency, this is the case,’ he argued.werner@namibian.com.na