By Garth Calitz The 13th Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) Exhibition and Air Show is officially underway at Air Force Base Waterkloof in Pretoria. The speeches have been made, the formalities have been handled and the obligatory handshakes have been exchanged. Now it’s time for the action. While the trade exhibition and conference get down to business, the skies over Waterkloof will also get busy, with airshow validation flights continuing throughout the trade days as parti

By Garth Calitz After years of talking about building a twin, Sling Aircraft is finally turning the dream into aluminium — with the prototype now taking shape in Cape Town and a maiden flight planned for June 2027. South Africa's Sling Aircraft is taking a major step beyond its successful single-engine aircraft with the development of an entirely new twin-engine Sling, a project that the company says has been made possible by a fundamental shift in the regulatory environment.

By Garth Calitz There are airline-manufacturer relationships, and then there are relationships that become so deeply embedded in an airline's operation that separating the two starts to look rather like trying to remove an aircraft engine with a butter knife. Airlink and Embraer fall firmly into the second category. Over more than two decades, the South African regional carrier and Brazilian aircraft manufacturer have developed a relationship that extends well beyond the trad

By Rob Russell Not a horror movie gone wrong, but a stunning, moving display to remember a horrendous and shocking event in our history. On the evening of Wednesday, 9th September, months of planning culminated in downtown New York, as the sky filled with drones watched by thousands who had gathered to see the unique event. To mark the 25th anniversary of the destruction of the Twin Towers, it was decided to do something unique, never seen before and very appropriate to the l

Angola is taking another step into the rapidly evolving world of unmanned aviation, with the delivery of six ANAVIA HT-100 NAVAL unmanned helicopters for its new generation of naval corvettes. The six aircraft, built by Swiss manufacturer ANAVIA, have completed Factory Acceptance Trials and have been handed over to the Angolan Navy. Two systems will eventually be carried by each of Angola’s three new BR71 MK II Combattante-class corvettes, providing the ships with an organic

General Atomics AeroTec Systems (GA-ATS) has brought the iconic twin-turboprop back into production in Germany with the Do228 NXT, an extensively modernised evolution of an aircraft whose combination of STOL performance, ruggedness and versatility has made it a familiar sight in remote and demanding operations around the world. The programme reached a major milestone on 2 May 2026, when the Do228 NXT demonstrator completed its first flight from Oberpfaffenhofen. The flight ca

By Garth Calitz Africa’s aviation industry is entering a period of unprecedented fleet growth, with airlines expected to more than double the number of aircraft operating across the continent over the next two decades. But behind the headline numbers and multi-billion-dollar aircraft orders lies a less glamorous, and potentially more important, question: Where will all those aircraft be maintained? The issue is already becoming visible in South Africa, where regional carrier

By Garth Calitz The South African Air Force’s (SAAF) top man will take centre stage at AAD 2026, where Lieutenant General Carl Moatshe will deliver the keynote address on the final day of the conference at Air Force Base Waterkloof. From 16 to 18 September, Africa’s defence chiefs, policymakers, industry executives and assorted people selling solutions to problems that governments have not yet found the money to solve will gather at Waterkloof for the AAD 2026 Conference. The

By Garth Calitz Bombardier’s flagship Global 8000 has secured approval to operate into London City Airport, adding one of Europe’s most challenging business aviation destinations to the aircraft’s growing list of capabilities and giving operators direct access to the heart of London. Bombardier has announced that the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has approved its Global 8000 business jet for operations at London City Airport (LCY), with the designation taking

By Garth Calitz International flags are everywhere at Africa Aerospace and Defence 2026. There are expected to be delegations from more than 50 countries, hundreds of exhibitors and a considerable international defence industry presence on the ground. So, naturally, you might expect at least a respectable collection of foreign military aircraft to accompany all those international visitors. Well… about that. The AAD 2026 flying programme released yesterday makes for rather in

By Garth Calitz Rumours are circulating ahead of Africa Aerospace and Defence 2026 that a European country could bring an Airbus A400M Atlas to South Africa for this year's show. Nothing has been officially confirmed, and for now the A400M should remain firmly in the "watch this space" category. But if the rumours prove correct, the aircraft's appearance at AFB Waterkloof would carry rather more significance than simply adding another impressive military transport to the stat

By Garth Calitz In less than a week, the skies over Pretoria will once again become considerably busier as aircraft, defence systems, aerospace companies and thousands of aviation enthusiasts converge on Air Force Base Waterkloof for Africa Aerospace and Defence 2026. The 13th edition of AAD runs from 16 to 20 September, with three days dedicated to the trade exhibition before the gates open to the general public for the two-day air show on 19 and 20 September. For five days,

By Garth Calitz There are few aircraft that announce their arrival quite like the Airbus A380. It doesn't so much land at an airport as occupy it. Two decks, four engines, a wingspan that makes taxiway planners reach for the antacids and enough seats to transport the entire population of a "platteland" town in one go. When Airbus launched the A380, it wasn't merely building a new airliner. It was making a rather confident prediction about the future of commercial aviation. An

By Garth Calitz Mozambique’s national airline has decided that if you are going to reinvent yourself, you might as well start with the name. Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, better known to the aviation world simply as LAM, has begun a new chapter under the rather more internationally familiar name Air Mozambique, coinciding with the arrival of two Embraer E190s and an increasingly determined effort to drag the airline back towards operational stability. The timing is hardly acci

By Garth Calitz South Africa’s aerospace industry has been handed an important reprieve in the latest round of US trade measures, with civil aircraft and aircraft parts and components specifically excluded from the 12.5% tariff imposed on South African exports. For an industry that has spent years building a reputation for producing capable, internationally competitive aircraft, the exemption is more than a footnote in a lengthy tariff schedule. It could make the difference b

By Garth Calitz Cape Town's newest aviation project is promising an opening, a longer runway and a growing hangar complex. There is just one small problem: according to SACAA, the aerodrome doesn't have its licence yet — and its formal Part 139 approval process has not even fully commenced. Atlantic Aerodrome is getting bigger, more ambitious and, apparently, rather more complicated. The new aviation development has been promoting an increasingly impressive proposition for th

By Garth Calitz There are aircraft programmes that arrive with grand promises, enormous launch orders and enough PowerPoint slides to fill a hangar. Then there is the Embraer E-Jet, which quietly went about its business, convinced airlines that a 70- to 150-seat jet could actually be useful, and has now reached the rather significant milestone of 2,000 deliveries. Embraer celebrated the delivery of its 2,000th E-Jet on September 2, 2026, with the milestone aircraft, an E195-E

By Garth Calitz The ZS-CAR story has taken another significant turn, with Transport Minister Barbara Creecy asking Justice Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi to initiate a judicial inquest into the January 2020 crash of South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) Cessna Citation S550 ZS-CAR near George. The move comes after more than six years of controversy surrounding the accident, during which the crash has been investigated, re-investigated, disputed and subjected to increasing

By Garth Calitz Mozambique has overhauled the regulatory framework governing private aviation, introducing a new licensing system that removes the requirement for an Air Operator Certificate for private operators while simultaneously imposing tighter controls over aircraft, pilots, passengers, records and the way privately registered aircraft may be used. The new Regulation on the Licensing of Private Air Operators came into force in July, replacing the system that had been i

An aircraft flew without relying on GPS navigation signals, instead using quantum sensing technology to measure its movement and maintain an estimate of its position. It may sound like something from a particularly ambitious science-fiction script, but this was very much a real flight test conducted by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Honeywell Aerospace. Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what wasn't happening during those four hours. There was

By Garth Calitz The Pretoria Airshow has now firmly established itself on South Africa’s aviation calendar, with the second edition of the event at Rhino Park on Saturday, 29 August delivering a day that combined serious flying with the increasingly important entertainment and family component that modern airshows require. Following the inaugural event over the Easter Weekend in 2025, this year’s show demonstrated that Rhino Park has become a significant player on the airshow

By Garth Calitz Cape Winelands Airport is being designed to do something rather more ambitious than simply provide another runway and terminal for the Western Cape. Buried within the airport’s long-term development plans is an idea that could prove considerably more important to aviation than the passenger terminal itself: a dedicated “sky corridor” designed to accommodate drones, VTOL aircraft and other emerging forms of aviation. The concept is still in its initial phase an

By Rob Russell Every time you pick up a newspaper or travel magazine, you read about the increase in international travel to and from SA, with many overseas and foreign airlines increasing their flights into South Africa. Mainly tourists and great for the economy, but also many business people. Your President is always, when he is not passing another BBBEE law or running to the courts to stop his impeachment, encouraging foreign business to invest in SA. Whilst many of these

By Garth Calitz South Africa’s airline industry is taking precautionary measures to protect flight operations at Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport following an unplanned shutdown at the Natref refinery, highlighting once again the vulnerability of the country’s aviation fuel supply chain. There have been no widespread flight cancellations and Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) says there is currently sufficient fuel available to maintain operations. However, a