Airlink

Airlink is southern Africa's largest independent regional airline, based at Bonaero Park beside O. R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg and flying an all-Embraer fleet of around 70 aircraft. Its network covers more than 60 routes to over 45 destinations across Southern Africa, including the remote island of St Helena, which it first served commercially in 2017. Founded in 1992, it spent 23 years as South African Airlink under a franchise agreement with South African Airways before ending that arrangement in 2020 to trade under its own 4Z code and brand. Qatar Airways acquired a 25% shareholding in 2024 — the ceiling for foreign ownership under South African law — while the original founders remain shareholders.

Flying for Airlink

Airlink recruits pilots directly onto its Embraer fleet rather than running a sponsored ab-initio scheme, so candidates apply holding a South African commercial licence and instrument rating and build their hours elsewhere first — commonly through instructing, charter or bush flying. What sets the airline apart is that it trains its own crews in house: its training centre at Bonaero Park was built in partnership with Embraer and expanded in 2019 to house full-flight simulators for both the Embraer 190 and the ERJ-145, so type-rating and recurrent training happen on site rather than overseas.

As one of the few operators offering a route onto a jet flight deck without leaving South Africa, Airlink attracts far more applicants than it has seats, and selection for a regional airline of this kind normally pairs a technical and licence review with aptitude and psychometric testing, an interview and a simulator assessment. The reasoning, memory and multitasking demands of those tests are the same ones every airline screening uses, so practising them properly is one of the few parts of the process a candidate can prepare for in advance.