Air allowances for helo flight engineers seemingly coming back
Date: 7 October 2025
Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga intimated in response to a Parliamentary question the thorny issue of flight allowances for SA Air Force (SAAF) flight engineers could be remedied.
Flight engineers attached to the five SAAF helicopter squadrons are mustered as “fitters aircraft” and – strictly speaking – are not considered air crew. Making matters worse was the withdrawal of air allowances, reportedly “grossly insufficient and misclassified” earlier this year, apparently leading to small scale industrial action. Unconfirmed reports had it the air allowance for flight engineers was in the R5 000 region.
At the time Rear Admiral (JG) Prince Tshabalala, SA National Defence Force (SANDF) Corporate Communication Director, said the Air Force was operating at “approximately 40% capacity” with efforts underway to improve on the availability of flight engineers.
Motshekga, responding to Democratic Alliance (DA) Member of Parliament (MP) Patrick Atkinson, had it the military dispensation allowance is being implemented to “compensate technical members for their qualifications”. He heard further the Department of Defence (DoD) Human Resources Division Chief, Lieutenant General Malungisa Sitshongaye, was part of engagements to finalise higher allowance notches for flight engineers.
Atkinson posed the question on behalf of colleague Chris Hattingh, one of three DA parliamentarians performing oversight on matters relating to defence and military veterans. In terms of parliamentary regulations MPs are allowed only a certain number of questions to ministers per term of Parliament. Hattingh told defenceWeb he resorted to enlisting the assistance of other DA MPs having exceeded his quota but still has “a list of parked questions”.
The Motshekga reply gave no timeline on flight engineers receiving higher allowances.
Helicopter flight engineers mostly obtain and polish the skill sets need to be on the flight decks of A109, BK117 and Oryx helicopters at 87 Helicopter Flying School (HFS) at Air Force Base (AFB) Bloemspruit with Charlie Flight 15 Squadron also doing some specialist flight engineer training at Air Force Station (AFS) Gqeberha.
In addition to A109, BK117 and Oryx rotorcraft, the SAAF operates Super Lynx maritime helicopters (at 22 Squadron, AFB Ysterplaat) and Rooivalk combat support helicopters (at 16 Squadron, AFB Bloemspruit). Both types have a two-man crew with specialist systems operations, including weapons and sonar, assigned to the second crew member. A defenceWeb inquiry on this specific post title in June to the SANDF Directorate Corporate Communication (DCC) remains unanswered.
The number twos on combat support and attack helicopters are widely known as weapons systems operators (WSOs), abbreviated to “wizzos”. For maritime rotorcraft, systems operator is the norm, although some the post sometimes goes as maritime systems operator.
A retired SANDF officer, with a Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Operation Mistral deployment to his name, told defenceWeb the usage of “wizzo” was widespread in the central African country. “It doesn’t seem to be the case at higher SAAF level,” he said adding “FEs, the widely accepted abbreviation for flight engineers, was in general use before I left”.
Republished with permission of defenceWeb.
