Originally Posted by
Ken Scott
I hope that 22Gp have ensured that none of the students will get a commercial licence out of this training - imagine what might happen if they did?! Pilots might stay to the end of their service rather than working in their own time & jumping ship as soon as they have the license in their hand.
Maintaining the current system of obstructing the attainment of professional licences has certainly proved to be a winning policy for retention.
Nothing to do with 22Gp and
everything to do with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Military flying trg does not meet the EASA or ICAO standards required and so EASA deem any UK military trained pilot to be a “3rd Country” and so only small amounts of accreditation. The only way to fix this is for all military fg trg to be done iaw EASA syllabi, examination criteria and an approved trg organisation.
Will they get a CPL? Nope, as to complete a modular EASA CPL you need a PPL, 150hrs and have completed the CPL or ATPL exams. The baby pilots may have a PPL but are unlikely to have the other - EFT is now around 50-60hrs. The ME lead in is between 15-20hrs. Only
qualified service pilots are exempted the Theoretical Knowledge trg before they sit the sit the EASA exams and even then they normally attend a ‘crammer’ package to prep them for the exams to ensure success. The baby pilots would need to do the full part-time ~18 month learning groundschool or the 4-5 month taught EASA ground school.
So I hope you can now understand why this is not a 22Gp blame issue?
PS. Military ground school is now about 2 months overall with EFT, MELIN and MEPT, so someway short of the civvy one.