Hey all,
Well seems like a real can of worms has been opened on this one. I think that some people are taking it all a little more seriously then the gripe that was intended.
Personally I have done the US & Canadian system as well as the JAA.
In the US you sit in a booth with a computer and do your exams in a reasonable time period for a reasonable cost, the results are obtained in a matter of seconds not days.
(And on that point I think that the common saying of "it takes months" is understood and should not be blown out of proportion by someone trying to score points)
In Canada you trundle on down to your local TC office, where after giving them a call a couple of days ahead of time they ask whether you would like morning or afternoon and which exam you would like to take, it is still done on the card reader paper like the JAA exams not on computer, but when you are done you tell them, they take your paper and run it through the machine in front of you and give you the result.
Two other things that I will say about the FAA and Canada tests are that you get feedback on what you got wrong in the exam. You also get a chair and desk that you can actuallu use. Trying to flight plan on one of those JAA exam desks is disgraceful.
Now as far as I rememeber from instructing the only way one can learn is to know what one got wrong. And this does not happen with the JAA exams.
The JAA exams are also extremely costly 52quid, or another way when I sat the VFR comms paper it cost me 10quid a minute.
Well I hope that this thread can continue in a polite non-slagging match as I think that there are true greivances to be aired, also the fact that I would like the people coming through the system behind me to benefit from a change of process.
-273