IH,
Ah ha the game is afoot. The prices are current I have just come back from SA 3 weeks ago. But to get each of the schools prices go to their websites. If you PM me I can send you contact details and recommendations.
The prices, like UK, are pretty standard across the country from the 5 or so schools I visited. I flew with 3 schools out there and little difference in price but quite a difference in instruction, aircraft and pre/post flight facilities.
I am no exam queen. I wouldnt say that I struggled with the JAA exams but I had to resit 2 of my 14.
The CPL exams are sat on a PC at the CAA in Pretoria and they are multi choice like ours but they only have 3 answers not 4 and there is no negative marking. There are definately only 8 exams for CPL/IR I know I've sat them.
They are :- Met, Flt Planning, Radio & Electronics (Radio NAV), Nav, Instruments, Air law and Procedures, Human Perf, and Ac Tech & Gen.
As for difficulty. I can assure you that they are far far easier than JAA in the volume required. The depth is simlilar but because they have a very defined two tier system of ATPL and CPL the exams are based soley at thinking that you will fly an ac less than 5700kg infact they are predicated on the King Air.
The one subject that gave me trouble and admittedly has got a significantly lower 1st time pass rate than any other was Nav. This quite simply because there are loads of complex nav plots to be done on a Lamberts which allow you to make multiple errors and thus waste precious time. Nav is one of 2 where there is some time pressure.
The other subjects were so much easier that you found yourself getting 95 or 100% after 30 mins of a 2 hour exam.
Met is local climate only, no global climatology, so mostly decodes and simple local effects. (Fohn, sea breeze, ana/kata, etc)
Air Law is combined with Ops Procs and focuses mostly on the Ops Procs side but there is no RVSM, RNPS, etc cos it is only local to SA.
Tech is called ATG for Aircraft Technical and General but is 95% piston based. Super and turbochargers come up and the niffnaff gear, hyds, and other systems but only in small quantities and normally in such a way that even if you don't know a guess will see you right.
Instruments is literally only the pressure instruments, no EFIS, EICAS, AMS,etc as this is in their ATPL syllabus!!!
Human Performance is mostly physiological not much of the pscychological effects.
Radio & Electronics focuses in great depth on Radar, ILS, VOR, DME, NDB, NDB, NDB oh and NDBs and pretty much ignores everything else. So if you understand the theory you will have little work to do there.
And finally Flt Planning is the same graphs but all based on the King Air instead of the 737. Hence much more simple and not only that you are allowed planning handheld computers (you must buy/borrow one even if you are a whizz wheel god) to do things like fuel, DA etc calcs as they give you no formula or reference in the CAP style book. This is the only other exam where there is some time pressure.
So they are honestly all in all much easier.
Can you revise for them in 2 weeks. Yes you honestly can but that means 10 - 12 hours a day for 14 days. If you want 1st time passes. If you can I'd reccomend going out there to revise for those two weeks rather than getting the books sent to UK because you will find that you may have questions and you need SA people to answer them.
I used a school which had a PC based practice system. This was quite simply the best thing that I did in the country. It was so similar in format, level and question that it made the exams far, far easier.
Want more, IM me?
Good luck, I hope you go it's a wonderful country.
VT
