Flight Training In East Africa/Kenya/Tanzania/Uganda And The Rising Costs For Training And Tough Regulations

East Africa  has  Soroti in Uganda as one of the latest and old pilot training schools followed by East Africa School of Aviation based in Kenya for ,Air Controllers  course, Flight Dispatch and operations course, Engineering ,Management courses in aviation. Kenya has emerged as one of the fastest pilot training area with Wilson Airport leading with over 5 flying schools and with the launching of Orly Airpark recently which will mainly provide private aircraft parking and training to decongest the Wilson Airport.

For your pilot training course you are advised to engage a consultant in aviation. There are many schools in Kenya but some do not advice professionally but they are only after money and it might take you over 3 years to complete your flying hence need to engage a consultant who has the knowledge  and experience which school provides quality, effective and efficient service. The consultant will also assist you on a daily basis and engage the school on why they are not following the syllabus or taking too long for a certain course and this will put them on their toes to improve in there area of weakness. As a student is you complain there will be bad blood even lead to suspension and thus affecting you mentality which will ruin your career.

1. Examination Fees and Other Charges hiked by Kenya Civil Aviation Authority.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority propose to introduce a new "flight safety charge" of usd 2 per passenger on internal flights and kshs 50 on domestic flights. Stakeholders have warned repeatedly that it is better to collect one ‘commuted' annual fee per aircraft rather than a little fee for each service. The annual fee for licenses are being virtually doubled, such as, Students Pilot License will go up from kshs 500 to kshs 1, 000, a CPL from kshs 2,700 to kshs 4,500, and a Type Rating from 900 to 2,000.

Costs of sitting examinations are being tripled. In the PPL, Air law will increase from 500/- to 1,500/- , Navigation from 500/- to 1,500/- , etc. All CPL Subjects are proposed to go up from 1,100/- to 3,000/- each.

Ethnic discrimination still remains a feature in conversion of CPLs "foreigners" will pay kshs 16,000/- for writing  a conversion paper of their  foreign CPL, while "Kenyans" pay only kshs 10,000/-.

ATPL conversion exams will cost foreigners kshs 32,000/- whereas Kenyans will pay kshs 16,000/-. While we have these variations, Kenya Civil Aviation Authority is supposed to be reminded that ICAO regulations states that all aviation fees and charges must be the same for everybody, foreign or indigenous.

There are consultants who can organize for ground classes for Engineers, Pilots for those who want to convert their licenses before they sit for the exams and it normally takes 4 weeks for South Africa & American trained students and for British 1month and 2 weeks in class to be able to pass the exams.

2. Uganda CAA Scuttles Student Training.

The Uganda Civil Aviation Authority has now instructed all the flying schools that no hours flown will be logged before having obtained the Student Pilots License. In Uganda the issuance of the Students Pilot License takes weeks and month with the loss of applications, the need for a separate "security" check and the obvious miscommunication and loss of documents possibilities between CAA and security body.

The new Uganda Civil Aviation Regulations apparently require this and the CAA is now enforcing it and disallowing any flight time done by students during their interminable wait for the SPL.This means that before a school can start flying with a student, if he wants to log that time, then there will be a delay of unknown duration while the application is processed. This basically kills off flight training in Uganda for all but the very patient.

Instructors feel that it certainly takes away any attraction of a trial lesson in that the student can no longer log this 30 minutes. And when all fired up and excited from the trial lesson they will now have to wait weeks or months to begin training .This will effectively reduce the number of people wanting to start training.

Flight schools are now struggling for survival in Uganda, despite the fact that there is a good demand and the airlines are crying out for new Ugandan pilots.

Though costs are being hiked for pilot training, it is also based on the value of the earnings after completion of the course. The highly paid pilot in general aviation first officer kshs,120,000=00  and airlines pay  lowest kshs 300,000=00 and thus no need of alarm when the costs rises.