Johannesburg – Fuelling of aircraft at OR Tambo International Airport resumed after an attempted cable theft caused flights to be delayed, the Airports Company SA said on Sunday.

“I wish to confirm that normal fuelling operations have resumed… the airport had been operating at significantly reduced fuelling capacity for about six hours,” spokesperson Unathi Batyashe-Fillis said in a statement.

Technicians implemented a temporary solution to activate fuelling services shortly after 16:00, Batyashe-Fillis said.

“The fuel pumps are now able to transmit fuel for uplift into aircraft.”

Domestic and international flights were affected by the incident. Flights could not take off from around 10:00.

Batyashe-Fillis said the attempted robbery of cables happened just outside the perimeter of the airport.

Police were investigating. Acsa regretted the incident, she said.

“The incident has inconvenienced our passengers and airline partners. Passengers are advised to contact their airlines for revised times and relevant information.”

South African Airways spokesperson Tlali Tlali said his company was notified about the delays and apologised to customers.

“Whilst the situation is out of the airline’s control and has affected all flights across the board, SAA nonetheless would like to apologise to all our customers for the inconvenience caused by this incident,” Tlali Tlali said in a statement.

The backlog created by the interruptions would take a while to bring operations back to normal as per the schedule, despite fuel supplies having resumed, he said.

“Every effort is being made to reduce the effect on later flights which are mostly international. The impact of the interruptions was in the form of flights being delayed by up to two hours in some cases.”

– SAPA