“I was just doing my job. It was my country duty. I couldn’t ask someone else to do what I wouldn’t do” – SAA’s modest chief pilot, Captain Vusi Khumalo, brushes aside any adulation and says mission to evacuate South Africans from Wuhan was a team effort
SAA’s modest chief pilot, Captain Vusi Khumalo, brushes aside any adulation and emphasises that the mission was a team effort
Aboard the Airbus A340-600 were also the cabin crew, medical staff and SA National Defence Force personnel. “Yesterday [Tuesday] somebody came to me in the dining room and said: ‘Are you the guy who flew us?’ I said yes. He said: ‘Thank you so much, some of us have been struggling in our dormitories for like 45 days and we were so worried and frustrated.’ I said: ‘That’s what I do for a living, that’s my job.’
Aboard the Airbus A340-600 were also the cabin crew, medical staff and SA National Defence Force personnel.Khumalo started his career as a pilot at SAA in January 1994. Before that, he had had his first stint of commercial flying at Bop Air – or rather, Bophuthatswana Airways -- in 1987.He recalls the first time he saw an aircraft, a moment that changed the trajectory of his life which, up until then, seemed certain to go towards his being a lawyer.
While I was still in high school one of my relatives also got me books on flying and aerodynamics – all the different lessons. I discovered that those would be the same books I was going to be using in flying school for my pilot licence,” he said.
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