Pay & conditions · Africa
South African Airways: pilot jobs, pay and conditions
South Africa · Legacy · SA / SAA
Hiring status unknown
SAA's employment page states that first officers are recruited only in specific windows when a need arises; no open pilot campaign was visible in November 2026. The state-owned airline has grown from about five to 19 aircraft since leaving business rescue (CEO John Lamola stepped down end of April 2026; Matshela Seshibe is acting CEO), with two more A330-300s due.
Pay
Unofficial figures. Not from an agreement or the airline: collected from pilot forums, salary sites and other public sources. Treat them as indicative.
No pay scale is published. The only rand figures are from a Daily Maverick opinion piece (21 Dec 2020) by Guy Leitch, based on pay information supplied by SAA pilots: about R75,000 net per month for a junior A319 first officer with six years' service, and about R126,000 net per month for a senior captain with 26 years' service. These are take-home (net) amounts from the business-rescue period and predate later increases. Since then: SAA offered 8.46% backdated to 1 Apr 2024 against a SAAPA demand that fell from 30% to 15.7% (BusinessTech, 4 Dec 2024), leading to a short strike in December 2024 and work-to-rule action in March 2025. A three-year deal signed on 28 Mar 2025 with SAAPA and the NTM Pilot Forum gives a 7.66% total-cost-of-employment rise on 1 April of 2025, 2026 and 2027, plus a new years-of-service salary progression model from 1 Apr 2025 (Travel News, Mar 2025). Pay is structured on a total-cost-of-employment basis. The 2020 figures are old and unofficial; treat them as a rough floor only. Context for the 2020 figures: under the July 2021 agreement the 88 pilots kept on were to receive about half of their original salary, with allowances cut back to match other SAA staff (Travel News, 30 Jul 2021). SAAPA's 2024 claim was framed as restoring those Covid-era cuts (Business Report, 5 Dec 2024), and the December 2024 talks added about 1 percentage point to SAA's 8.46% offer, taking it to 9.47% (Daily Maverick, 8 Dec 2024). No newer rand figures from SAA, SAAPA, the press or court records could be found in Nov 2026. Glassdoor shows only one SAA pilot submission, in a foreign currency, so it was not used.
Agreement news
- SAA wage agreement with SAAPA and NTM Pilot Forum (2025-2027) ↗
Travel News · summary · 2025
Open vacancies (0)
No open pilot vacancies listed right now.
Conditions
- Allowances
- Not published. Pay is negotiated as total cost of employment (TCE), so allowances and benefits sit within the TCE package.
- Roster
- Rostering changes based on SAAPA proposals took effect on 1 May 2025 under the 2025-2027 agreement. Pilots get one extra leave day per year, plus one more in national election years, to offset public holidays.
- Bases
- JNB, CPT
- Fleet
- A320, A330-300, A340-300
- Benefits
- Medical aid, retirement fund and licence-loss cover form part of the package (Daily Maverick, 2020). Staff travel benefits are standard at SAA but not detailed in a current source.
- Union
- South African Airways Pilots' Association (SAAPA); NTM Pilot Forum also party to the 2025 agreement
Requirements
- First officer
- 1,500 hours minimum
- Type rating
- Not required for first officer entry (employment page lists licence and hours only).
- Licence
- SACAA CPL or higher with multi-engine instrument rating; Class 1 medical
- Other
- South African citizen; matric with English and Mathematics or Physical Science; at least 200 of the 1,500 hours on multi-engine aircraft. Taken from SAA's older employment-opportunities page; check the current SAA site before applying.
Sources
Not from an official source: figures collected from pilot forums, salary sites and other public sources. Indicative only · figures from 2025-03 · checked 1 Nov 2026
- SAA details agreement with pilots - Travel News (Mar 2025)
- SAA pilots strike - with peak travel season around the corner - BusinessTech (4 Dec 2024)
- Are SAA pilots really overpaid? - Daily Maverick (21 Dec 2020)
- SAA employment opportunities (legacy page)
- Inside the pilots' deal - Travel News (30 Jul 2021)
- SAA pilots feet stuck firmly to the ground - Business Report (5 Dec 2024)
- SAA pilots suspend strike while talks continue - Daily Maverick (8 Dec 2024)
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