Best flight school in South Africa?

[AlexanderH]

Hi, can anyone recommend a very good flight school in South Africa? I'm still not ruling that country out but am finding it difficult to find a decent school.
Cheers.

[Shunter]

Algoa in Port Elizabeth are excellent. Great bit of the world to fly in. There are other SA schools which have been strongly recommended in the past, so using the search function is a good move.

[AlexanderH]

Nice one thanks. I have emailed them for extra info.
How readily acceptable is a SA licence in the Asia region anyone??

[wolf_peace87]

Hey Alex,

You can try out FTS at grand central airport. The school has been highly recommended to me by a friend who did his training there.

Do you have any training ? and how will you go about with your ATPL theory ?

I hope this helps you out.

[alphalima]

Pilot Training South Africa | Port Alfred Flying School (http://www.43airschool.com) !
go to AvCom - Your Aviation Community (http://www.avcom.co.za) and ask around in there..
Cheers:ok:

[safta]

Take a look at SAFTA at www.safta.co.za (http://www.safta.co.za). Not claiming to be the best but BA Comair has trusted us with their 2009 cadets so we must be doing something right!!

[aerobatic sean]

Alex,
I take it you are looking towards South Africa for professional flying training - ie gaining a commercial pilots licence as the frist step.
Most important - South African flight schools have not embraced the JAA syllabus used in Europe and elswhere.
To gain a job as a professional pilot on the international stage one needs a JAA licence or in a few instances a US FAA licence.
Amazingly the SA CAA is being very tardy about bringing in the JAA training regime in across the board - from the private thru commercial and ATPL. The JAA licences will soon replace the existing SA licences.This is also not helped by the majority of flight schools being understandedly reluctant to start any JAA training .At some flights schools there is a hostile opposition to bring in anything JAR.
That is why there are many young South African pilots - some ab intitio , some with a SA commercial licence - studying in Europe at ground schools in mainly Britain and Spain. These students at JAA groundschools are working fulltime towards writing the JAR ATPL theory exams. The groundschools in the UK particularly are full of SA, OZ and NZ students spending many
( about 5 -7 ) months working towards the ATPL exams. Its a hard road, but helped by some excellent groundschool setups who achieve high pass rates.
If you wish to carry out initial flight training in SA - yup definitely.There are a few excellent instructors around - take reccomendations. I trained in Cape Town - use Stellenbosch Flyng Club as Cape Town International is pretty useless for training due to long taxi plus fitting into a busy single runway airport. I also flew from Durban, a great training area - Virginia Flight School or Federal Flight School.
You will find excellent resources on this website for both ground schools and professional flight training - its a well trodden road so theres plenty of folks to help you
Good luck
aerobatic sean

[alphalima]

Sean,
If one was to train in South africa, PPL + COMM, and went back to Europe, is the license completely useless? what would a Conversion to JAA consist off?
Or would you have to start all over again?
Regards,
Alphalima

[Flyting]

You'll have to sit all the CPL exams again and do flight test and medical...
Hrs are hrs and no one can take that away from you. You might have to do a bit of flight training too, depending on the rating you want.
It's a waste of money sitting the SA exams unless you intend on staying there to work. Doing a PPL and gaining hours and flight training is generally quite cheap in SA and easilly available compared to Europe, and besides, best place to holiday and awesome ladies...
43rd Flight School is also a good recommendation from what the plank drivers tell me...http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/infopop/icons/icon7.gif

[alphajet01]

hi guys ,
im looking for some school in SA for hour building , i read many topics said that its very cheap doing hour building there .. also wich side is good and less dangerous ,i hear port elisabeth is good , so any experience and good name for some schools will be appreciate , and btw is that les cheap than usa cauz i find some schools in usa with 65$ wet .
tks for ur help

[Glynis]

Amazingly the SA CAA is being very tardy about bringing in the JAA training regime in across the board - from the private thru commercial and ATPL. The JAA licences will soon replace the existing SA licences.This is also not helped by the majority of flight schools being understandedly reluctant to start any JAA training .At some flights schools there is a hostile opposition to bring in anything JAR.

Aerobatic Sean, I'm afraid you are not correct. SA is not going the JAR route and they will not replace the current licences.

I know a number of students who have completed their SA CPL/IR, then gone back to the UK, converted to JAR and it still worked out cheaper!

[GaryDent]

Hi ive trained at Stellenbosh flying School near Capetown ,after a numerous schools this was found to be adaquate to advance rapidly as well as being able to build hours there