Sudan Airways flights resumed Monday a few hours after the airline's fleet was grounded for violating civil aviation requirements, a civil aviation official said.
The national carrier was to be grounded starting Monday after an internal audit found it in violation of administrative and technical standards, said spokesman of the civil aviation Abdel Hafez Abdel Rahim.
But the company later appealed the decision and was allowed to resume its flights after it committed to fixing the violations, he said.
Thirty people were killed earlier this month when a Sudan Airways plane caught fire after landing and veering off the runway at Khartoum International Airport.
Abdel Rahim said the decision to ground the plane earlier Monday was not related the accident but to the company's "general performance, which is below the standards of civil aviation."
The 60-year-old beleaguered airline challenged the grounding order and presented a list of adjustments to Sudan's aviation authorities. It said it was appointing an independent expert to monitor services, asking the director-general and chief of operations to be full time staff and revising the frequency of its flights to accommodate its fleet size and age of its planes.
Abdel Rahim said the adjustments were accepted on condition that a new audit takes place in two weeks.
Sudan Airways put out a statement, published on Sudan's official news agency, promising its clients "to continue its efforts and strategies to upgrade" its services. The company said it has been subjected to a "media campaign."
The airline was privatized last year and a Kuwaiti company owns a 49 percent stake in it. The government and private Sudanese own the rest.
