If it is of any interest in this discussion, the now-superseded LASORS 2008 Section A Annex B included the following:
Recording of Military Flying Times – Taxi-time allowances
It is normal practice for pilots in civil aviation to record their flying hours on a “chock-to-chock” basis. However, UK military flight crew are required only to record “airborne” time - this practice being linked to Service engineering procedures and is unlikely to change.
The CAA has always been aware of this discrepancy, and of the fact that it led to Service pilots being slightly disadvantaged compared to their civilian colleagues when they left the Services.
In recognition of this, the CAA worked with the MOD (Training Policy Unit) to devise a system that would give some credit for military taxi times.
The system that was decided upon was the taxi-assessment system. The Service pilot adds a taxitime allowance (see table 1 below) to each sector flown as entered in his Service logbook - the taxi-time allowance being dependant on the type of sortie flown by the pilot. The taxi-time allowances built up throughout a career are then entered into a table (see table 2 below) to arrive at a total for their career. Prior to leaving the Services this table should be placed in the pilot’s logbook and signed by his last Squadron Commander. Please note that this arrangement cannot be used for CAA licence issue purposes.
It should be emphasised that when canvassed, most UK airlines said they were aware of the discrepancy between the Service and CAA method of recording flying hours, and took this into account in the recruitment process. Where this is the case, any hours calculated by the individual Service pilot in excess of 75 hours should be
taken into account by the individual airline.
The taxi-time allowance that the CAA is prepared to recognise for licence issue purposes is 5% of the total military “airborne” hours up to a maximum credit of 75 hours for ATPL(A) issue and 10 hours for CPL(A) issue. This corresponds to the average amount of taxi hours credited for civil pilots under the “chock to chock” system. When the Service pilot submits his application for licence issue, this taxi-time allowance (where required to meet minimum experience requirements) may be added to the recorded military airborne hours and the new total declared on the application form. Effectively it will mean that a military pilot will be required, inter alia, to acquire 1425 hours of military “airborne” flight time for ATPL(A) issue and 190.5 hours for CPL(A) issue. Note: this allowance cannot be used to satisfy the eligibility requirements for any of the QSP licence accreditation schemes detailed elsewhere in this publication.
Table 1
Taxi Allowance Times
Fixed-Wing Training Aircraft 10 mins
Fast Jets 10 mins
Multi-engine Transport Aircraft 15 mins
Display Flying 5 mins
Wheeled Helicopter - Airfield Operations 5 mins
- Field Operations Nil
Skidded Helicopters Nil
Aircraft Carrier Operations Nil
Note that Table 2 contains the following column headings:
Aircraft Type, Sorties Flown, Taxi Allowance, Total
In this way the "conversion" from military to civilian hours was by adding an overall taxi figure rather than by adjusting each individual flight time.