Commute to work
A few years back I was working a contract in Lille, there was no way that I could have traveled from Oxfordshire to Lille in 1:35 any other way than by private aircraft.
Commuting was the best option with me spending about 5-6 days in Lille working and then returning at the weekends.
IMO this could only be done in the summer due to lack icing conditions, most of the trips were flown VFR but it did involve a lot of VFR on top.
What I did have was avalblity of ILS aproaches at both ends (and Lille being 24H) and I do have an IR.
I had a 100% dispatch operational rate over the summer (one trip canceled following a Vac pump failure) but I did 2 IFR aproaches (1 ILS & 1 GPS) that were close to the limits and another two or three ILS's because it was less trouble for ATC to fit me into the IFR system rather than have me low level VFR when they had IFR traffc.
My guess is that a over the same period a very sharp PPL/IMC could have managed a dispatch rate of around 80% but to answer the original question I think a new PPL holder would at best make a dispatch rate of 50%.
The contract in Lille was flying an A320 and the way that the things happened I only had to fly one approach IFR that I could not have flown VFR in the Airbus, that was a CAT3B with no DH and an RVR of 200M...........come to think of it I was a passenger on that because the autopilot did all the work! Without doubt the most chalenging flying of the whole contract was the commuting NOT flying the airliner.
Last edited by A and C; 28th Nov 2011 at 09:18.