Flight training in South Africa
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