FOREIGN LICENCE VALIDATION

South African registered aircraft ("ZS")

Anyone with a foreign licence wanting to fly a South African registered aircraft will need to get their licence validated. We’ve teamed up with a local flying school at Wonderboom, Pretoria, to make this process as seamless as possible:

We’ll need copies of your pilot’s licence, medical, English proficiency certificate and radio licence (if separate), last four pages of the logbook, passport and a colour photograph (passport/ID size).
You validation will be valid for a maximum period of 5 years, or date of expiry of your licence/medical if sooner than 5 years.
The 5-year validation is issued 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”.

Note: SACAA no longer pre-issues the 5-year validations.

Validations are only issued after the air law results and flight test report have been submitted and checked.

You have the option of a short- or long-term validation (both refer to private day VFR validations):
• A 28-day validation – Simpler testing (and no risk of failing the airlaw exam), valid for a specific 28 days.
• A 5-year validation – Testing includes an airlaw exam and a longer checkflight, however it’s valid for 5 years and easily renewable after the 5 years lapse (paper exercise).

The Process in Brief:

28-Day Validation:

5-year Validation:

Validation pre-application at the SACAA prior to your arrival in country. We’ll do this for you, get the paperwork and application out of the way, so that we have the license pre-processed by the time you arrive in South Africa.
We (and the SACAA themselves) strongly suggest applying a minimum of 3 months prior to arrival in SA!

Then, on site:

A briefing on local procedures (usually around 2 – 3hrs), and:

A basic competency check-flight (PPL renewal)
(no airlaw exam required)
Submit (by hand) copies of relevant documents to the CAA for hand-over of the validation (DURING SACAA OFFICE HOURS ONLY!)

A full initial PPL skills test, including cross-country test.
Write an online airlaw exam
(note there’s a 7 day waiting period between re-write attempts).
As the 5 year validation is pre-issued / already in hand, the above effectively “activates” your validation and you’re good to fly straight away

For more information, or to get started with the validation process, get in touch with us.