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Old 6th Sep 2015, 21:34
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Jumpindan
 
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: NW Africa / DFFD
Age: 44
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African pilot woes

I don't know about the specifics of Morocco because I live and work out of Burkina. However, I do fly the entire Western Sahara. What I do find though, is that no company wants to put Northern Africans in the cockpit. It has nothing to do with competence or racism, but risk. You are not going to put an African pilot at the controls of a B737 that costs 35 million when his country's GDP is $550USD per person a year. Almost all African carriers are backed by European holding companies and they won't risk such an expensive asset to someone they have no legal control over. What is to stop a pilot from flying across the border of a conflict and then ditching the aircraft in another country? It can and does happen, so European backers of aircraft leased to national carriers won't allow local nationals to captain the aircraft. Due to some nationalization projects in places like Kenya and Nigeria, FO's are required to be local nationals. But until countries buy the planes outright, foreign note holders and paranoid African dictators (they all are, there are no free elections on the continent) will not support locals flying their most valuable assets that can leave the country at will...
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