Orange Tails and Vapour Trails: Wind in the Wires to Glass Cockpits – A Pilot Remembers

Biographie de Paul Liebrecht

During my final year of high school, I was involved in a motorcycle accident. The injuries I received resulted in my application to the South African Air Force for pilot training being turned down. I recuperated during a very interesting year serving as a guide on Highgate Ostrich Show Farm in Oudtshoorn. In 1964, I successfully applied to South African Airways for an apprentice position as an Aircraft Engineer.
During my apprenticeship, I learned to fly at a small civilian flying school located at Rand Airport, gaining my Commercial Pilots Licence and Instructors Rating more or less at the same time as qualifying as an Aircraft Engineer. Leaving SAA in 1968, I took up my first flying job as an instructor at Wonderboom Airfield north of Pretoria and, after a year there, accepted a position as an instructor in the then-South West Africa.
In 1970, I was accepted by SAA as a pilot flying Viscounts, Boeing 737s, 707s, and 747s. During this period, I served as a Councillor for eight years in the newly formed municipality of Midrand, which lies between Johannesburg and Pretoria. In 1985, I motivated the benefits of decentralised domestic fleets to SAA, resulting in aircrew being based in Cape Town and Durban in 1986 and my being appointed Flight Operations Manager for The Cape Fleet, a position I held until my retirement.