Lets look at the reason for the so called shortage of pilots in S.A. - Racial recruitment. Well qualified pilots HAVE to leave the country as they are told “sorry, we need people of colour and females."
S.A.A. might not be the father of this scheme, but they sure want to use it for the wrong reasons. Maybe the country's who invented this scheme really could not find the numbers they were looking for at home, but come on S.A.A. ... if you are so short, when last have you employed , or even interviewed, a pale male over 35 ( not to mention 40 )with lots of experience, and yes , there is a queue of them waiting to join.
This is a political move, happens to suite the bean counters as well.
I had an e-mail from a friend who is in management at S.A.A. advising me to not use his flysaa address, as he won't be in the office much longer. His complaint, or rather insight, is that this is step one in a process. Management will try to keep all incidents involving M.P.L's from the public, and if they don't have a major incident in 5 years the Government will then push for more representative Captains, and guess who will be looking good for the job.
P.S. fluffy fan and gang, hope you have an upgrade date within the next 5 years.