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).

Your validation will be valid for a maximum period of 5 years, or date of expiry of your licence if sooner than 5 years.

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)

1. Copy of pilots’ license
2. Copy of English radio license (if separate from license)
3. Copy of English language proficiency (LPR), min. level 4 (if separate from license)
4. Copy of medical certificate
5. Copy of passport
6. Copy of the last 3 pages of your logbook
7. 2 color photographs (Passport / ID size) or copy of prior validation
8. Completed application form

Current Validation procedure

Apply 2 month prior to arrival in South Africa with the documentation listed above.

The validation is issued before your arrival with the following endorsement:

"For private day VFR operations only, provided the holder first successfully completes an appropriate South African Air Law examination and a flight test at an approved ATO, with a Grade I or ll flight instructor”.

At your arrival you do an Airlaw Exam, the Briefing and the flight test. Plan with 2 days for this procedure (with prior preperation). The more days planned the better.

Details on Airlaw Exam, Briefing and Flight Test (for the five year validation)

Airlaw Exam:

This 28 question, online multiple choice exam covers basic airlaw in SA.
Decent preperation is required. The passmark 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.

Flight Test:

You must pass a flight test of about 2-3 hrs on the aircraft type you wish to be validated on.
This is a basic test of your proficiency on that particular aircraft type, and will include steep turns, stalls, forced landings, a triangular cross country flight and other basic checks.

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.

On top of this you'll need to be rated on the specific type of aircraft you wish to fly. This means at least 2hrs time on type in your logbook.