South Africa’s aviation industry is facing a severe worker shortage.
The sector is struggling to retain both pilots and air navigation controllers owing to a dispute over salaries, leading to an exodus of skilled employees that could result in further price hikes for flights.
Pilot shortage
Trade union Solidarity recently announced it was entering salary negotiations with South Africa’s largest domestic air carrier – FlySafair – with the goal of preventing a significant loss of the company’s personnel.
FlySafair’s pilots are seeking a 15.7% salary increase, while the airline is prepared to offer a hike of up to 9.47%.
“These negotiations are of critical importance as several factors are forcing pilots to consider other job opportunities,” said Solidarity network organiser for the aviation industry, Remón Viviers.
In addition to the salary demands, the union’s pilots are trying to negotiate for improved working conditions and overall wellness for their members.
According to Viviers, these concerns were primarily brought about by the introduction of a new rostering system that has had a profoundly negative impact on pilots’ quality of life.
“If this issue is not addressed urgently, it could result in further staff losses, which could have a serious impact on the airline’s operations,” said Solidarity.
The union stated that it is committed to negotiating a fair and sustainable agreement that will allow FlySafair to continue operations without disruptions.
The airline has defended its stance on the new roster system, arguing that the same policy is already used by other airlines both in South Africa and around the world.
“It is designed to optimise aircraft utilisation, improve operational efficiency, and ultimately reduce costs — allowing us to continue offering competitive fares to our passengers,” it said in response to questions from BusinessTech.
FlySafair also highlighted that the system was designed with pilot lifestyle considerations in mind, offering new features including bidding for preferred flights before schedules are published, flight swaps, and preferential leave bidding.
“These are all improvements on the previous system and take place within the strict parameters of flight and duty regulations and our advanced fatigue risk management framework,” it said.
Nevertheless, FlySafair’s pilots have voiced their lack of satisfaction with the airline’s offers, many of which could leave to find more favourable conditions elsewhere.
Doing so would not be too difficult, either, as pilots have a relatively easy pathway to employment in other countries owing to a global shortage of air crews.
The international aviation industry has been grappling with a lack of pilots for years now, which has resulted in a widespread practice of more developed countries “poaching” personnel from South Africa with the higher salaries offered by major airlines.
All of this is bad news for South Africa’s own industry, which is currently struggling to keep up with high demand.
Kirby Gordon, FlySafair’s chief marketing officer, previously warned in September 2024 that South Africa was facing a worrying loss of pilots in line with international trends.
“It seems that a lot of talent is getting mopped up by the bigger international carriers,” he said.
A similar sentiment was expressed by Cemair CEO Miles van der Molen, who claimed that South Africa was essentially exporting its pilots as a commodity.
“There’s a constant flow outwards. And the restocking of the pool is definitely slower than the departure rate,” he said.
The concern is that a lack of pilots will ultimately force airlines to cut the number of available flights, resulting in lower seat capacity with higher ticket prices to compensate.
Air traffic controller shortage
The other major skills shortage concerns the lack of air traffic controllers.
The Air Traffic Navigation Services (ATNS) is facing a similar retention problem as the airlines with a lack of operators for its air traffic, radar controllers, and instrument flight procedure designer positions.
Similar to pilots, these jobs are in high demand overseas with the potential for much higher salaries.
Plane Talking managing director Linden Birns explained to MyBroadband that the issue has been exacerbated by the government’s decision to cut the defence budget.
The South African Air Force has always served as a valuable pathway for workers to transition to commercial pilots and civilian air traffic controllers, which is a dynamic that has been negatively affected by the defence cuts.
“The SAAF no longer operates as many aircraft and it has a curtailed budget of annual flying hours,” said Birns.
“It no longer represents an attractive or viable pathway to a civilian career as an airline pilot or air traffic controller.”
The ATNS has also failed to meet administrative deadlines to review hundreds of critical instrument flight procedures across the country, creating an increased workload for traffic controllers.
This backlog has created scheduling issues for airport ground operations, leading to several flight delays and cancellations.
“[Airlines] are also legally obliged to pay statutory user fees to ATNS for every flight and for any additional use of its airspace and infrastructure if a flight is diverted or turned back to its point of departure,” Birns said.
This means air carriers are required to pay additional fees to ATNS for the issues it has created, while also paying more for fuel wasted by spending time in the air for an opening to land or on the ground as the engines idle waiting for their turn to takeoff.
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