Excellentia Airline Academy Completes FlyAway 3.0 Cross-Country Training Exercise Across 6 South African Airports

South Africa – Excellentia Airline Academy (EAA), one of South Africa's fastest-growing flight training group, has completed its third multi-destination group cross-country training flight — FlyAway 3.0 — with six aircraft navigating a structured route from Johannesburg to Kimberley and south through George, Oudtshoorn, Stellenbosch, and Cape Town before returning to base, with FlyAway 4.0 already underway in the Western Cape.

• The FlyAway 3.0 exercise involved six aircraft from EAA's combined fleet — including the Cessna 172, Piper Archer, and Sling NGT — operated by students from both the Skyhawk Aviation and Aeronav Academy training centres that now operate under the EAA umbrella, accompanied by two flight instructors and an operations manager.
• The cross-country route — spanning multiple South African regional airports from Johannesburg to the Western Cape — was designed to expose students to real-world cross-country flight planning, multi-airport navigation, operational decision-making, and varied airspace and weather environments, with coastal flying providing additional exposure to challenging meteorological and terrain conditions not available at EAA's Gauteng home bases.
• The FlyAway programme has become a regular structured training initiative since December 2025, with this third instalment following on from FlyAway 1.0 and 2.0, and FlyAway 4.0 already in progress with a new student group in the Western Cape — reflecting EAA's systematic approach to integrating real-world flying exposure into its commercial pilot training curriculum.

EAA was formed through the acquisitions of Aeronav Academy and Skyhawk Aviation in October 2025, combining two long-established South African flight schools under a single corporatised training group with bases at Lanseria and Grand Central airports. The group is targeting a fleet of over 100 aircraft within 18 months and 200 aircraft within three years, with an ambition to train more than 6,000 pilots by 2030.

Source: Excellentia Airline Academy