SA CPL IR to JAR CPL IR

[aintboeingaintgoing]

I am a South African living in the UK now, I have done all 14 JAR ATPL exams and have just got back from SA where I took my hours up to the 150 that I needed to start my CPL training in the UK, however when I was out in SA hour building I got chatting to one of the instructors and he suggested that I do my SA CPL IR and then come back to the UK and convert the SA CPL IR across to a UK CPL IR! I have just finished looking at the costs of doing the CPL IR here in the UK and it is going to cost close on £20k, and I am fairly confident that this would be greatly reduced if I did the training in SA and then come and convert it to the UK CPL IR

There are a few things that worry me

1) would I have to do all of the SA Comm exams (even though I have the 14 UK ATPL subjects)
2) if I did that and came back here and was looking for a job would that count against me as if I followed this route as I would then have done 90% of the of the hours that I would have in South Africa!
3) Roughly how many hours would I have to do when I get back to the UK to convert to the UK licence; I have read that it is like 10 sim hours and then 5 hours training and then the flight test!

As this is such a huge decision I was wondering if anyone out there has followed the route that could give me some advise.

[south coast]

I did the SA cpl/ir and then converted to the JAR thing.

For the SA cpl you will have to do their cpl exams and then their flight training and flight tests.

On your return to the UK to convert to the JAR cpl/ir, you will have to do hours neccessary to pass the flight tests, ie. however many you take for the school to be happy to sign you off for the flight tests.

All round, expensive!

[aintboeingaintgoing]

Thanks south coast,

Having done it that way would you do it again or would you just pay the £20k and do the licence here in the UK? What I have also noticed is that a lot of the IT training here is done on the simulators where in SA it would all be done in the air!

[south coast]

i guess we are not exactly comparing like with like here, because i flew for a sa operator for 6 years flying on contracts in various places. this allowed me to go back to the uk on my time off and do the cpl training and flight test, then the ir training and flight test.

so, i dont know if it is worth just going there for the hours and training, you might aswell do it straight in the uk, as there are slight differences in training and flight tests.

if you intend to look for employment here, i would do it in the uk, if you plan to work in sa, (work permit etc etc organised) go to sa.

[orangesky]

darrylbird thats a similar situation i was in a few years ago, what you have to do is ask yoruself where you want to work. if you plan to go back to SA for work, go down the SA CPL route, if you are planning to live in the UK for the foreseeable future go down the JAA route, otherwise what happens is you end up in limbo land flitting between SA and here, and having to keep current on 2 licences.

there are few advantages of doing a JAA cpl, building a network of contacts in the UK, a mix of sim and aircraft time which i think is a good thing sometimes you get much more out of an hours sim than you do in the aircraft. i dont think you can base your decision on purely which one is the cheapest.

good luck !

[zapoi67]

For the SA cpl you will have to do their cpl exams and then their flight training and flight tests.


:= NOPE ! He already holds the ATPL theory, so NO NEED to pass the CPL one. :ugh:

PS : South African schools also schedule 20 hrs IFR on simulator, usually 5 for the night rating and 15 for the IR. ;) Well, I haven't checked all of them, but at least Algoa FC, FTC George, FTS Grand Central, APTRAC-PE and Progress Flight Academy do have simulator IFR training in their syllabus.

[south coast]

Hold your guns there fritz...!

He holds the JAR ATPL subjects with no CPL or IR flight tests complete, so the only licence he has is a PPL.

If he goes to SA with just exams and a PPL guess what they might give him on the strength of the licence he holds, a PPL validation.

If he goes to SA with the a JAR CPL/IR [ATPL exams passed], guess what they will give him if he wanted to validate the licence...you guessed it, a SA CPL/IR.

So, your statement doesnt make sense because he doesnt hold anybody's CPL as of yet.

You have to have a CPL before you can have your ATPL issued.

So go wave your finger at someone else and I would appreciate it if you could bash your head into that wall a bit harder!

[herschel mcleod]

i am british and i have 1800 hrs and i am living in SA your SA CPL holds no water in the UK you must hold a full ATPL from SA and then all you get is that you do not have to do the ground school in the uk but you must still do a crash cours with some one like bristol (2 weeks per moduel) because to writhe the uk exams you must have a school sign you out .you must then do a minimum of 15hours if in the UK (@ 6000 pounds about remember you alread have a SA IR) and then do your Com test then re do your twin rateing .
So mate just do every thing over their it is less stress and in SA you will have to re do all of the subjects over here you UK exams mean nthing over here as the exams over here mean jack over their.
you can only get a JAR validation if you have 3000 hrs on heavy (a 737 dose not count) and then you can only fly that aircraft for 12 months and then you must write all 14 subjects and retest ATPL .

it all sucks but each country is looking after it's own industie

Good luck and well come to the jungle:ugh:

[zapoi67]

Hold your guns there fritz...!

.....

So go wave your finger at someone else and I would appreciate it if you could bash your head into that wall a bit harder!

South Coast, do you really need to get aggressive ? If I am wrong, just write it and add some colour and emoticons for the fun... but no need to offend people.

Actually I admit that I made a mistake : I see now that I read your post too fast and I misunderstood your statement about "passing their CPL exams" as "passing the UK CPL exams" (for the SA -> JAA conversion). Also, honourable South Coast, please accept my apology : SORRY !!!

Anyway DarrylBird, info about this issue is available from the SA/UK specialist, Irv Lee : http://www.uksa.flyer.co.uk/viaSA.pdf Check point 3. at the bottom of page 3.

[lol777]

I wanted to do JAR and found out all the info i could get. And this was it.

1 To get a JAR If you have a SA ATP you must have 3000 Hours COMMAND on a heavy. Otherwise you have to write all the subjects.
2 If you have a SA ATP you dont have to do the ground school. But there is also some catch there. If all your ATP hours flown are on something like a King Air you have to do ground School. Like someone said here a airschool has to sighn you out to write the subjects. And they make sure you can pass them otherwise it reflects badly onto them.
3 If you want a validation you must have 1000 hours p1 on the on JAR 25. Or you must have 1500 hours p2 on a JAR 43 (I think that is the no). Then you can only fly g reg aircraft and I think only in the UK. Then you get 12 months to get your JAR.

So there is no easyway out to get this. Iwould say ( if you have the cash)just do your JAR it will count a hell lot more in the rest of the world than your SA CPL would. The only things that held me back from doing JAR was the money.

[lol777]

O yes and thats not even talking about the hours you have to do. at an airschool

[south coast]

No problem Zapoi...

But my words go exactly to show how words and pictures can be interpreted.

It was in reply to your pictures, bashing head into wall as if you had read utter ubbish.

Anyhow, no hard feelings.

[maverick_supersonic]

just like herschel mcleod said....its the same in every european country
i'm in the same boat myself. goundschool, exams, aircraft training.
lots of money involved.

[aintboeingaintgoing]

Hi

Thanks to all those who replied, got some really good advise, seems that the general consensus is that if I want to fly here in the UK, which I do, then I should do the training here in the UK and not bother going down to SA getting the Comm IR down there and then coming back here and converting it to the UK licence! I did read the Irv Lee article which also seems to suggest that when you actually do come to looking for a job one day, the people that would employ you are not really interested in where you got the licence, what they are more worried about is the fact that you actually have the licence requirements for the position you are applying for! What I have also come to realise when doing all my homework is that the advertised costs for the Comm IR training approx £18k are seriously short of what the actual cost of the course will be in the end, sometimes by as much as 30 or 40%....... anyone here that have done the UK route experiences this even when they did the course in the minimum hours needed?

I still cannot help but think that the £8k that could be saved could go a long way towards building a couple of hundred extra hours in my log book rather than into the initial training costs

[orangesky]

thankfully i passed both JAA CPL and IR with pretty much minimum hours and yes, ofcourse the cost was more than the equivalent SA courses but the amount i paid here was pretty much as advertised. a good thing about using part sim and part a/c on the course is if you need to brush up on your holds the sim is real good value ! darryl also dont forget to factor in the cost of getting to SA and back a few times, plus the loss of earnings here in the UK while you are in SA ... the way i look at it is the UK route will ALWAYS be more expensive than anywhere else in the world - welcome to rip off britain, but if this is where you want to live and work, then you have to play the game :yuk: you are right in that airlines etc arent really interested in where you did your training, as long as you are competent ! however doing it in SA wont help you UK contacts network.