Hi,
This is something that I have spent a LOT of time trying to figure out if this option would be good or not, I was just at 43 Air school a couple of weeks back, did not actually chat to them about the JAR training, but like you say it works out at about £9000 for a MECPL IR in South Africa as compared to the £20K that it would cost here, you also have to bear in mind that you might have to do the conversion across to the full JAR IR which would cost about £5k
I posted a thread in the African section on PPRUNE last week and the response that I seemed to get was If you want to work in SA do it that way and if you want to work in UK do it in the UK, but in the same breath I have to take a loan out for the flying and every penny counts….
There is also a lot of talk about doing the JAR CPL IR in Spain which seems to be a cheaper option as well…..
Would you mind keeping me posted on your findings and I will do the same with mine