Cape Town Ops
Last week, a Etihad heavy departed CPT Rwy 19, and within seconds got a TA. The flight crew sounded extremely unimpressed with ATC for not bothering to provide a pretakeoff caution for helicopter traffic. Sadly, this is just one of numerous TA's experienced by fixed wing aircraft operating in and out of CPT. This can be quite alarming and distracting at a critical phase of flight. By African standards, Cape Town is becoming a major airport, and rotary wing ops need to be reviewed by the CAA. Apart from heli traffic transiting the zone, there is a chaotic situation with mixed ops in the general aviation area. As if that is not bad enough, many of these movements are R22's doing training. Heli operators should really be encouraged to relocate, and those who remain should be subjected to far more stringent control. Hopefully, I am totally wrong, but it seems to me that it is only a matter of time before there is major heli incident at the airport.