SAAF to Join Denel & SAA in Bid to Curb Skills Loss

The South African Air Force (SAAF) on Friday said that it plans to cooperate with State-owned defence firm Denel and national carrier South African Airways to curb the skills loss, which was most crucially experienced in the pilot and technical environments.

Chief of the SAAF, Lt-Gen Carlo Gagiano said that Cabinet had decided that government and industry should combine efforts to sustain and ensure a strong aviation industry.

"The SAAF regards the integration and cooperation process with industry as an opportunity to strengthen and improve its total capability and effectiveness in the light of the ever-decreasing defence budget," he told journalists at a briefing in Pretoria.

SAAF would assign two of its newly-completed hangars at the Wonderboom airport to State-owned defence firm Denel. Gagiano stated that the company's C130 Maintenance Repair Organisation, would now jointly work with SAAF on repairs and maintenance of SAAF planes.

The benefit for Denel would be lower overhead costs, while the SAAF would benefit from having its younger recruits working with more experienced staff, which would result in skills transfer. The agreement would also provide the SAAF with aircrews to join as reserve force members.

Gagiano noted that in recognising the need to have an efficient, affordable and sustainable maintenance support for its operational systems, the SAAF has developed a new support vision with Denel Aviation. This vision would be based on the principles that the SAAF would focus on its core business, while Denel Aviation would focus on assigned maintenance, repair and overhauling.

The SAAF has also entered into an agreement with national carrier South African Airways (SAA) to train the airliner's pilots, ground crew and cabin attendants. Gagiano stated that by doing this, the industry would be stabilised with a current inflow of well-trained pilots, and would further give the SAAF access to more reserves.

The SAAF was currently also in the process of evaluating its recruiting process, as well as well as the mustering profiles of all musterings, whereafter the applicability of the selection tools would be investigated for each mustering.

"In order to increase the recruitment pool of potential candidates, the SAAF will embark on a decentralised recruitment process as from January. This will enable SAAF Officers Commanding to recruit members from the geographical area in which each base is situated, and also to market the SAAF as employer of choice within the respective areas of responsibility."

Meanwhile Gagiano on Friday confirmed that in line with international practices, the SAAF has decided to adopt a three-tier pilot training system, wherein elementary initial training would be carried out on a very basic, side-by-side seating aircraft.

As the SAAF currently did not have such an aircraft in its inventory, this particular training phase was being outsourced to Babcock Central Flying Academy, while the SAAF was in a process of leasing such an aircraft for a period of five years. However, the materialisation of this leasing would take about two-and-a-half years, during which time Babcock would undertake the initial training.

Pilots who wished to qualify would have to fly about 70 hours in the Cessna 172 aircraft, during which the student would qualify for a private pilot's licence. From there, students would go through the second and third phases of training, and would need to log a further 115 hours in military aircrafts.

Gagiano note that with the implementation of the first phase of training, and by doing it on an outsourced basis, the SAAF would save on training expenses, and would have more success in sifting appropriate students from the masses.

Source: Engineering News