By Natasha Joseph
1Time has described as "precautionary" the emergency landing which one of the airline's Boeing 737s, transporting 113 passengers from Johannesburg to George, was forced to perform at the South African Air Force base near Bredasdorp.
The airline said on Tuesday that its flight 1T829, which is operated on charter by aviation company Safair, was diverted to Air Force Base Overberg on Friday because of a "wing flap indication warning".
This light, which indicated there may be a problem with one of the wing flaps, lit up as the plane was approaching its destination, George Airport, 1Time spokesperson Anya Potgieter said on Tuesday.
The diversion to AFB Overberg was advised because the base "had a longer runway", Potgieter said.
Flight 1T829 departed Johannesburg at 3.30pm on Friday and was due to land in George at 5.20pm.
An employee at AFB Overberg said on Tuesday that the pilot of the 1Time plane had contacted base employees and asked for permission to perform an emergency landing.
He said permission had been granted for the landing, and that the duty fire crew had been placed on standby.
As far as he knew, there had been a problem with one of the plane's flaps, and this meant it needed to come into its landing faster than usual.
This was made possible by the air force base's long landing strip, he said. There had been no problems with the landing, he said.
"The landing was normal."
Potgieter said the plane's passengers disembarked after the landing and spent the next few hours in a training facility building at the base, where they received refreshments from the aircraft.
She acknowledged that passengers had endured an "uncomfortably long wait" for alternative transport to George Airport.
"Due to the unknown time required to repair the fault and the closing time of George Airport, buses were arranged to fetch our passengers and transport them to George," she said.
"Unfortunately, the buses had to come from Cape Town, which meant an uncomfortably long wait for our passengers."
Potgieter said the buses arrived at midnight and all of the passengers had arrived at George Airport by 3.30am on Saturday.
She said 1Time staff at George Airport had "stayed on duty through the night".
The plane, without its passengers, left AFB Overberg at 11pm and flew to OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg, Potgieter said.
To compensate for what 1Time's CEO Rodney James called "the terrible inconvenience", passengers will each be given a return flight voucher by the airline's customer relations office.