After two years on the ground battling for his rights, transgender pilot Kailer Smit is back in the sky.
Smit, 33, is a qualified pilot and experienced flight instructor. He had flown close to 2,500 hours, trained dozens of commercial pilots and delivered tonnes of aid to countries in crisis when he was grounded by the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) in January 2023.
The reason given was that he had failed his annual medical because of “a history of gender-affirming” treatment.
Smit, who is on a 0.4ml weekly injection of depo-testosterone, which he had been receiving for well over five years under the monitoring of a skilled health-care professional at the time of his grounding, made several unsuccessful appeals against the ruling.
After a few months of being unemployed, Smit was given an office job by his former company at one-fifth of his previous salary.
“I got involved and learnt new things — I went into aviation auditing, flight operations, I learnt about cargo handling and accident and incident investigations,” Smit told the Sunday Times this week, as he was prepping to leave on Sunday for a pilot post in the DRC that will see him stationed there until September.
It was while he was grounded that he was invited to participate in a late-night interview on 5FM with presenter Leah Jazz. The chat about his grounding was heard by Jonathan Collins, a pilot who lost his licence after failing the medical because he is diabetic.
The CAA actually stepped in and helped speed things up. They got me before the Carc (Civil Aviation Regulation Committee) board, they approved the protocol and I was then able to get my medical sorted.
— Kailer Smit
Collins had gone a different legal route. Instead of fighting his own case, he instead turned to international best practices on pilot medicals and the latest advances in medicine. He was able to prove that diabetes is now an easily manageable condition and not a risk in pilots. He succeeded in having South Africa’s protocols changed for diabetic pilots and in getting his licence reinstated.
Touched by Smit’s plight, Collins contacted Smit to offer guidance and advice.
“I submitted a protocol for medical assessment for transgender aviators and it was quite an arduous process,” Smit told the Sunday Times.
“The CAA actually stepped in and helped speed things up. They got me before the Carc [Civil Aviation Regulation Committee] board, they approved the protocol and I was then able to get my medical sorted,” said Smit.
And now he is back in the air and cleared to go back to the humanitarian work he was previously doing, which he loves so much. While he is grateful to be flying again, he believes his time on the ground was a good experience that opened him up to new ideas instead of the standard expectation of joining an airline as a junior and rising to senior pilot level over time.
“My career trajectory has definitely changed. I loved aviation auditing and accident investigations and even managing cargo handling with flight operations,” he said.
Now back to earning his pre-grounding salary, Smit can start sorting out the debt he incurred and pay back his retired parents, who helped him out with their pension and savings.
“I’m excited. It has been a long journey with some lapses and slip-ups along the way and some huge jumps forward — especially at work where I have been able to engage more closely with top management and people I would ordinarily have had no contact with.”
Public health-care expert Prof Elma de Vries of the Nelson Mandela University Medical School, who is also chair of the Professional Association for Transgender Health in South Africa (Pathsa), said she was “delighted that Kai is now allowed to practise his profession just like any other human”.
She said Pathsa believed strongly that the CAA’s decision to ground Smit had no merit and applauded their efforts to “align their policy to allow transgender people to do what they love and pave the way for other transgender pilots who want to transition”.
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