History of the UK IR?

[IO540]

I am curious as to what the route to getting this was in years past, say from 30 years ago to when JAA took over c. 2000.

I vaguely recall somebody saying that if you turned up with more than 700hrs P1 then you could skip the ground school, or something like that...

[18greens]

I think the difference was that pre JAA if you had 700 hours you did not need to do the approved 50 hour course, it was just training as required. I don't recall the ability to skip groundschool.

(One benefit of the old system was your CPL included IMC priviledges so no need to renew the IMC every 24 months, although, on reflection its probably a good thing they took that one away)

[Whopity]

From the inception of the CAA (1974), the IR was a 40 hour approved course. If you had in excess of 600 hours experience as pilot of aeroplane then you were exempt the approved course and only had to take the IR Skill Test. I seem to recall that there was a credit for IMC training up to 15 hours. You could not add the IR to your licence untill you had 700 hours total if you followed the unapproved route.

Written exams were either the PPL (IR) exams or if you had completed the theory for a CPL then later the BCPL that also covered the IR. The theory remained valid so long as you had a valid CPL. You could not take the ATPL exams untill you held a CPL unless you were on an Integrated Course. There was also a Senior Commercial Pilots Licence (SCPL) that disappeared pre JAA.

[IO540]

That explains why there are so many older pilots in their 60s and 70s with a CAA IR. 700hrs is easy to knock up if you own a plane, or something similar.

[pistongone]

Well IO540, as you are IR Rated and flying a TB20 I would have thought you would know the answer to that one? How many years have you been on this earth? I am 44 and i remember the rules pre JAA, i even have my original carboard licence cover:ok: Excuse me for not being upto date on JAA but did you mean that you can no longer take the test without doing the approved 50hr course, regardless of hours flown? That was one of my long term plans, eventually:rolleyes:

[FlyingForFun]

Excuse me for not being upto date on JAA but did you mean that you can no longer take the test without doing the approved 50hr course, regardless of hours flown?Current requirements are for a 50 hour course for a single-engine IR, 55 hours for a multi-engine IR. Both of these can be reduced by 5 hours if you have an ICAO CPL, or reduced to a minimum of 15 hours if you have an ICAO IR. There is no concession for any amount of total time. There is also no concession for an IMC rating - so someone with an IMC rating and several hundred hours of real IFR flying still has to do the 45/50/55 hour course as appropriate.

I haven't been around long enough to know the pre-JAR system, so I find this an interesting thread. I would guess that IO540's reason for asking is to compare the difficulty in getting an IR now with the previous situation, and then to ask why it is so much more difficult nowadays?

FFF
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[rightbank]

I did my CPL/IR around 1989-1990. I had approaching 700hrs then and I did not have to do any minimum hours training for the IR, just to be competent enough to pass the test. The Ground exams for the CPL covered the technical side of the IR. For that I did my ground training at home rather than attend a course. I had a PPSC correspondence course but, as far as I can recall, I did not have to get any input from PPSC regarding satisfactory progress on the course content to get the rating issued.

[IO540]

FFF, you are right; the reason for my Q was curiosity, triggered by the "apparent fact" that if one picks any pilot flying a G-reg with an IR, he's usually a lot older than me (I am pushing 50).

There had to be something, way back, which made the IR far easier (than JAA) for owner pilots. I say "owner pilots" because the common alternative (self fly hire) doesn't make sense in the European IFR context, for several reasons.

I don't think flight training was ever a problem, because again knocking off 50 hrs or so in your own plane is not an issue. The issue would have been the ground school. Due to all the other pressures of "life", ground school is never going to be easy for someone who has been knocking around for long enough to be an aircraft owner (in general terms). Today, it is the JAA ground school, and to a lesser degree equipment/airframe certification issues, that drive the N-reg scene.

Pistongone - I have been flying only 6 years. I remember nothing that is pre-JAA.

[pistongone]

I hope you are making up for lost time IO540! I read somewhere recently that the CAA came into existence in 1974:D Can you even think of a time when one could do pretty much as he pleased?? NOW WE HAVE INTERFERANCE FOR THE SAKE OF IT.

[Flap40]

I have seen it in writing (from the CAA to my TRE/IRE) that a CAA CPL (or CAA issued JAA CPL) is still valid for IMC privilges.

[18greens]

IO540,

I don't think the IR has got harder. Its always been hard, no questions ,and I don't think time has made it harder. I think what you are observing is the inevitable upgrade scenario. ie you get sick of driving in traffic jams, so you learn to fly , you realise that flying VFR is not as reliable as driving so you get an IMC and base your plane at a 24 hour airport with ILS. You realise the IMC is pretty cool but it doesn't work outside the UK so you get an IR. By the time you have amassed the cash and desire to do this you are generally over 50. The only other people who get IRs are aspriing airline pilots. Generally if they become airline pilots they will never fly a light aircraft ever again , so they won't be seen in the GA world ever again.

You are right about groundschool in that in the CAA days you could do all the gound exams without taking 4 weeks off work for refresher courses. This made them more accessible for the weekend dilettante(but still very hard). Without this I doubt I would hold an IR, or a CPL for that matter.

I'm assuming the FAA ir does not require so much ground school (in fact I know it doesn't since i did the exams in an hour a few years ago having read all the answers in Gleim). I think the groundschool requirement may be the reason for more FAAirs than JAA irs rather than the airborne element.

Its all a shame really because the IR is jolly good to have and should be encouraged as a private thing rather than a jet job thing.

[IO540]

I agree with all you say, 18G, except the ease of the FAA IR ground school; it is easy only if you know the subject already. The JAA stuff is also catered for by question banks nowadays ;)

However I do think the JAA IR holders are substantially older than the FAA IR holders, on average. I suppose another factor here is that so few people have been doing the JAA IR that the average age of that group is bound to go up, and will keep going up. Nevertheless it seems to me that private pilots stopped doing the (as it then was) CAA IR quite some years before JAA came along.

[S-Works]

I am not old nor do I ever desire to be an airline but but I have a JAA IR.

I do remember the experianced candidate route for CAA issued licences but most of my flying has been done under JAA. Coming up on 2000hrs in the last 6 or so years.

The IR was very hard work from a theory perspective and the practical side was very exacting. I always had the intention of using it for GA purposes so insisted on "proper" training and as a result I went to places like the CI, Switzerland and France during my training rather than the normal route of flying 55hrs doing the test routes.

All in all a very worthwhile experiance and the rating gets some serious hammer now!!

[Whopity]

When the JAA IR came in in 1999, there was an outcry regarding the increase from 40 hours to 55 hours. Its interesting to note that the firstime pass rate with the extra training is now lower than it was with the 40 hour course!

[S-Works]

But I think that is a direct result of the number of low time pilots doing the PPL/CPL/IR all back to back in minimum permitted time.

I passed my IR first time after 55:05hrs but none of the other people doing it at the same time passed. Most were partial pass and a couple of total fails. But all of them had only the minimum hours(as Pilots, not neccessarily the IR 55hrs) required to take the test.

The IR-SPA-ME is the most difficult thing you will probably ever do in aviation. Single pilot IFR hand flown is the very edge of the envelope and for low time pilots it is easy to make a mistake that could be fatal and hence the examiners fail them or give a partial. When you have several hundred hours you are far more in tune with the flying and the envelope is easier to expand.

[slim_slag]

18greens, I assume you did the foreign pilot instrument test. You can certainly pass this by learning the answers and knowing nothing about the subject at all. The FAA student can also learn the answers to his test as well in the way that you did, but then has to satisfy an examiner in an oral exam which will find out for sure whether he knows his stuff. A bit tougher I think, and the cause of many a failure of people who did OK in the written.

As for groundschool, nothing mandated, you can buy the books and teach yourself. The place I did some work put on a 12 week course for the IR which covered all you need to know, and was taught by an experienced and current part 135 pilot who could let you know how it really works too. Two hours of class one night a week with a short break half way through. This fit nicely into a work schedule, and if you missed a class it didn't matter as you could just read the book. So the FAA system requires you to learn what you need to know, and lets you learn it the way suits you. At the end you still have to get through the oral.

[High Wing Drifter]

I can totally agree with Bosex's comments with regard to difficulty and low-time pilots, having myself achieved only an MEIR partial and not in minimum hours I hasten to add! As always I suspect that there are a number of pilots who maybe bemused as to why some poeple have a problem with the IR, but I speak as somebody who didn't really struggle much with any other phase in training.

It can be rather frustrating as there isn't really anything difficult per se. Doing an NDB, ILS, asymetric, cruising in the airways, etc, etc are all pretty straightforward activities. The problem is that the routes are so short, the margins are so tight and the workload high enough such that any lack of precision or errors can easily lead to deteriation of performance in the next activity as there is seldom time to catch-up with work not already completed, as a result it is extremely easy to loose situational awareness - it doesn't need to be pointed out that if things do start to slip you need more spare capacity to get back agead of the aeroplane than required at the point of slippage! Couple that with the congestion at many regionals where IR training/tests are done and the fact that it doesn't matter what your flight plan says, your route is 75% certain to be different once you are in the air.

[IO540]

My original interest in this was more along the lines of the history of the ground school (because I believe it is the ground school which has all but killed off the CAA and later the JAA IR, once the FAA scene became prominent, rather than any flight training issues) but if we are now moving onto flight training, what HWD describes is exactly the same as in the FAA IR.

In FAA IR training there is (generally**) no enroute segment. An enroute segment is vital to reducing pilot workload. It allows the pilot to relax, untangle his brain, have a pee, call up ATC and enquire which runway # is operating at the destination 200nm away (so he can get the STARs and plates in order), etc. Instead, IR training is done in a small area and you are lucky to get 30 seconds in which there isn't something desperately urgent to do. The workload is very high. Most of it is partial panel, with the AI, DI covered up and doing 3deg/sec timed turns. One minor fcuk up leads to another and in under a minute the whole "flight" (which was probably only 10 minutes long in total) has come apart.

Most pilots know technically what they are supposed to do but it's easy to make a mistake under these rather unrealistic conditions. I say "unrealistic" because a partial panel situation is an emergency without question and you would use the GPS and get ATC to give you vectors and not go sticking post-it pads over additional instruments :) Still, this is training - it's always hard.

So one has to practice and practice. In the UK, students probably hammer the Cranfield-Cambridge-Bournemouth (or similar) sectors dozens of times over. In the US, you will do the same between two or three airports, chosen for a combination of available approaches.

There appears to be little difference in the flight training JAA v. FAA.

However the FAA examiner will expect you to know all the avionics in the plane used for the checkride - none of this switching off of the GNS530 under JAA...

** there are FAA IR options in the USA where you take a 2 week IFR trip around the USA, flying every imaginable approach on the way, and then when back the base you take a checkride. I don't think anybody in CAA/JAA would wear something this revolutionary but it has to be the best training one can possibly get.

[S-Works]

to be fair..... You ARE permitted to use the GNS430/530 for the JAA IR it is just that most IR training aircraft do not have them fitted so the students are only permitted to use what is there (strangely enough.....)

So for example if you did the Cranfield-Cambs-Cranfield route you use RNAV to get you off the airway to the CAM beacon and the same on the return. This can either be something like a KNS80 or the GNS430/530. The CAA is not dogmatic enough to insist you dead reckon when there are accepted aids in the aircraft.

What they do ensure is that you can do the job using just the basic fit (which is what the airways system and approaches were designed around) so that in the .0001% of a time you need it you can actually do it.

In reality all of our airways flying is done using RNAV equipment and it is a god send for cutting the corners off and direct routing.

I am a great supporter of GPS and would never fly without one. But I also believe that if you are going to be a proper instrument pilot they you must be able to use properly the old tools.

St Marys on Saturday morning with a 600ft overcast NDB only is a good example.