Come Fly With Us.

About the Howick Flying Club

The Howick Flying Club (HFC) is made up of two sub chapters, these are the power chapter and the gliding chapter. The power chapter is made up predominantly of micro light pilots, although their are a few powered aircraft which are hangered at Howick.

Gliding is a sport where one takes flight in a powerless aircraft and stays aloft by using the rising air currents, in the form of thermals, or a variety of other meteorological phenomena which give rise to lifting air. The gliding chapter comprises of five club owned aircraft (one  K-7, two K-13’s and a G102 for more advanced pilots) and a number of privately owned aircraft operating out of the Howick airfield adjacent to the Merrivale shooting range for the majority of the year. We do have a number of yearly away camps for club members in Harrismith and Underberg, We travel to these locations to make use of their superior flying conditions, these weekends are always incredibly festive and fun filled with everybody enjoying themselves on both the ground and in the air.

To introduce people to our sport we offer air experience flights at R350.00, and a motorglider at R600.00. This fee covers a joining fee for the day, the cost of ones launch and the following flight and insurance. After this initial fee any further flights will be at club rates. For those interested in learning to fly we also offer a introductory lessons package at R500.00 for five lessons. One has no guarantee of duration as gliding is reliant 100% on the conditions at the time, therefore flights range from seven or eight minutes to half a hour or more. At one's request, one can do a assortment of aerobatics from steep turns through to a loop, the only restrictions on passengers is that they must weigh under 100kg’s.

Aspiring aviators can go solo from the age of seventeen, joining significantly younger is not advised as one will be ready to go solo before reaching legal age and may well become disenchanted.