To fly a South African registered aircraft you must have your pilot license validated in accordance with regulations of the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA).
Documents needed for Validation
The following documents are need (every copy has to be certified as true and correct (stamped, signed and dated) by the appropriate authority in your home country)
- Copy of your pilots’ license
- Copy of English radio license (if separate from license)
- Copy of English language proficiency (LPR), min. level 4 (if separate from license)
- Copy of your medical certificate
- Copy of your passport
- Copy of the last 4 pages of your logbook
- 2 color photographs (Passport / ID size) or copy of prior validation
- Completed 12 month logbook summary
Current Validation procedure (as of October 2019)
There are now two options:
As before - Validation valid for five years:
Apply 2 month prior to arrival in South Africa with the documentation listed above. The validation will be issued, but is not valid. At your arrival you do an Airlaw Exam, the Briefing and the flight test. Plan with 2 days for this procedure.
New - validation valid for 28 days.
Apply 2 month prior to arrival in South Africa with the documentation listed above. The validation will be issued, but is not valid. At your arrival you do the Briefing and an easier flight test (no Airlaw Exam, no Cross Country flight test).
As this is a completely new procedure there is no experience how long this may take. The assumption is that it should be possible to do this in one day.
Details on Airlaw Exam, Briefing and Flight Test (for the five year validation)
Airlaw Exam:
The Airlaw exam is the first step during your practical test phase for your validation. It’s a
multiple choice exam written on a computer. You get your results immediately. There’s
approximately 28 questions, and the pass rate is 75%. Allotted time is 1.5 h.
Failure of the airlaw exam means a 7 day waiting period till your next re-write attempt.
Briefing:
Once you’ve completed your Airlaw exam, you need to be briefed by a local instructor on
Density Altitude (Pretoria / Jo’burg area often gets a DA of around 7000ft!!!), the effects this has on the performance of aircraft, and a briefing on the airspace in southern Africa.
This briefing usually takes between 2 - 3 hrs. No special preparation required.
Flight Test:
You will need to fly a navigational cross-country route of the instructor’s choice, and will be judged on general flying skills, navigational skills, radio work, airmanship, and general ability. This flight test usually takes around 2.5 h. Towards the end of the navigation flight your instructor will ask you to demonstrate the actions as is usual for a PPL flight test – stalls, steep turns, precautionary landing, emergency landing, etc.