Please click here to download the registration review table.

Reg Review - Dec 2011

To all our readers, a very happy and prosperous 2012. I must first of all thank all those who help me to compile this review: Monica Knoetze at the CAA, Ian Burnett of Air Britain and AVDEX; without their help my life would be a lot more difficult. Also to all the folks who have allowed me to use their photographs to illustrate this column, many thanks. It is also great to know that in general aviation we had a safe festive season. Let’s keep 2012 this way as well.

There are not a lot of amendments this month as it’s the end of the year and everybody is in holiday mode. The Hawker Beechcraft types are still in big demand with no less than five coming onto the register this month. Not all of them are new aircraft -  in fact most of them are used, showing that there is still a significant market for these stalwarts.

Of note are two Embraer EMB-135BJs that have come onto the register. There are also two hot air balloons registered this month.

SAA is continuing to upgrade their fleet, and another Airbus A330-243 was added this month. Cause for great excitement of course is the batch of new Airbus A320s that SAA is getting in 2012. The first of these has been painted in SAA colours at the factory, and is scheduled for delivery in early to mid-January, provisionally the 12th January. Watch this space.

On the deletions side, two more of SA Express’s Dash 8s have left our shores for the USA, as new aircraft replace them on the fleet. A Eurocopter AS350B3 has gone to Kenya.I wonder if this was the Kenya Police one that I saw in Eurocopter’s hangar a month or so ago. The Boeing 737 that was used to inaugurate SANTACO’s airline has been exported to Botswana to fly for a new scheduled operator: Blue Sky Airways, which is a subsidiary of the Christian Flying Mission.

On the NTCA side there is steady growth, with two more Slings, a Yak 18T and a Tiger Moth coming onto the register. The Tiger Moth is that well known Eastern Cape resident ZS-CID which has been registered into the NTCA category. There is also an Aerospatiale Gazelle registered this month – that makes two of them by my reckoning which are now resident here in SA. This Gazelle has seen quite a bit of service with the Israeli and Syrian defence forces as well as having been used in Israel on the civil side, and lastly in Hungary – she certainly has been around the Middle East.

I sincerely hope that 2012 will be a better year than 2011. Everybody seems to agree that 2011 was a tough year. I’d really like to see some more war birds coming into the country – a Spitfire would be fantastic! (Who knows? – this may yet come true).