Weather and Aeronautical Information

Flight Essentials

Unlike many countries, South Africa does not make aeronautical and weather information for flight planning simple or easy to access. Below are some useful resources, many of which we personally use and wholly endorse.

Aeronautical Information

The South African AIPs are embarrassingly incomplete and occasionally out of date. For the standard information including the En Route component which covers many of the VFR corrdidors and procedures see: AIPs

For a mostly comprehensive list of registered, approved, and licensed airfields see:

In line with AIC 014/2014 please ensure that the field you intend to visit is of suitable condition and design for the aircraft you intend to land there and all necessary permission is given. We expect all customers to abide by the SACAA's latest regulations on landing locations.

Moreover, we expect customers to show all due care and diligence in selecting the airfields they intend to visit and phone/email ahead of time as a matter of courtesy. An inspection pass of the landing location where possible is a given.

Electronic Flight Bags

Aeronautical Information is particularly problematic as there are both official and unofficial sources with unofficial sources often being more accurate, comprehensive and useful for your ordinary VFR pilot. Whilst we endeavour to keep our EFIS databases up to date with the latest and most comprehensive information this is not an easy task with companies like Garmin providing incomplete and inaccurate aeronautical information. Our MGL equipped aircraft have much richer and accurate information. Nonetheless, an EFB or extreme familiarity with an area is a must in South Africa. Many airfields, controlled and uncontrolled, have a lot of unofficial and unconventional procedures and processes. We recommend the following EFB applications:

  1. Easy Cockpit. Whilst not the slickest looking or most intuitive application, it is unquestionably the most information packed, up to date and accurate information you can get for South Africa. It is available on Android and iOS and is extremely well priced. This is unquestionably our recommendation for any pilot flying in Southern Africa. It is also the only EFB application that makes it possible to see true weather radar imagery in the cockpit with a much higher than standard refresh rate.
  2. Foreflight. Powerful, integrates well with Garmin avionics (MGL coming soon), incredibly fast and relatively data rich for South Africa but lacks a lot of critical information.

Weather

Weather is a complicated and particularly unpredictable factor in South Africa. We assist as much as possible with planning around weather and giving local insight where we can. Weather that would be considered safe in Europe is often deadly here so we encourage all pilots to err heavily on the side of caution. Great weather resources are:

  • Windy.com
  • Weather SA Aviation Website Comprehensive source of weather information pertinent to aviation and more. Anybody with a South African licence number including holders of 5 year validations can access the full site. Briefings can also be attained via the website.
  • FlyWatch Quick source of radar imagery and other weather info. Always double check time stamps.

Flight Planning

We are firm believers in filing a flight plan. A VFR flight plan in South Africa is similar to flight following in the USA and should feel familiar to pilots from Europe and elsewhere in the world. Outside of planning your flight on your EFB, filing a flight plan can be done via:

  • File2Fly. Full briefings can also be attained via the website. This is available to anybody with South African Licence number including holders of a 5 year validation.
  • Calling File2Fly on 0860 359 669
  • B4Flight is a website that helps you filter down to the most relevant and applicable NOTAMs, METARs, SIGMETs, TAFs, AIRMETs and winds aloft. You can easily drop in a KML, GPX or FPL and get a high quality briefing and visual representation of relevant information.