Mate i fully understand your situation. I have spend a fair bit of time travelling thru SA and i did love the place very much, specially Capetown, the wine region and Haut bay and so on. I could not agree with you more that you have a very beautiful country and I have always said it myself, if it wasnt for Oz, i could easily live in Capetown. Obviously if situations improve i mean.
So i do understand that family and future comes first and hence i mentioned you guys are left with not much of a choice. Perhaps i didnt explain myself properly or maybe you interpreted the post in another way.
All im saying is we are all a bit pissed off because we are trying to improve the lifestyle and conditions and when people accept conditions which are below standard, it will not improve anything. We need to airlines to realise that people will not accept there misely conditions, however as you can see in my post i did mention been stuck between a rock and a hardplace. By the way it's not just the Yarpies, we have a lot of General Aviation guys here flying B200 and other props who would kill for a jet seat, but as we are in contact with these guys directly, we can tell them to hold off a little while longer with their applications. Having said that there are still those around the country who are applying and getting in, but point been we are hoping the word is getting out slowly, so all will benefit in the future. I cant meet with you and your mates in the pub in SA to tell you this, hence i put it here so those who read it can take it in and perhaps realise why most Aussies are pissed off with what is happening.
As was mentioned before by someone else, i also have a lot of mates in GA who have more than enough experience to accept a right seat on a jet but they have decided against paying for a rating and then getting ****ty conditions.
All the best to you for 2008 and look forward to having a beer in a pub someone and discuss this in greater length
GRA