The United States has placed trading restrictions on four foreign companies for their ties to a South African flying school where Western ex-military members allegedly trained Chinese fighter pilots.
U.S. companies and nationals will need to apply for a special license – with a “presumption of denial” – before doing any business with China’s Global Training Solutions and Smartech Future, South Africa’s Grace Air and the United Kingdom’s Livingston Aerospace.
The firms were blacklisted "because of their links to the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA) and the training of China's military forces using Western … sources," according to a U.S. Department of Commerce federal filing set to be published on Wednesday.
TFASA itself was added to the Commerce Ministry's banned Entity List in June 2023 and is at the center of the former U.S. Marine and now Australian citizen Daniel Duggan's high-profile extradition case.
The United States has accused Duggan, who renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 and now has a family in Australia, of knowingly training Chinese military pilots at the South African school in 2012 in technical skills that included landing on aircraft carriers.
Duggan has denied the accusations and says he only thought he was training civilian Chinese pilots. His Australian family says the U.S. military is trying to make an example of him in order to warn other American ex-military members against training Chinese pilots.
In a memo last month, the U.S. military warned Western ex-military against lucrative job offers to train Chinese pilots, with recruitment by firms with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army “not always obvious, as companies may not initially promote the PLA’s role.”
“Job locations may be in China, South Africa, or elsewhere, with lucrative contracts and the opportunity to fly exotic aircraft, with vague details on the ultimate customers,” the June 5 memo said.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.