I attended the Weston-Super-Mud event. I'm glad I went. I feel MUCH more positive about the whole thing, now, keen to get started on it.
26 delegates signed in, I thought there'd be more. The system seems fit for purpose, being developed from the ATPL product. In addition to Jim Marren from the CAA, a representative from the New Zealand software company gave an insightful briefing into how it will work. As Jim said, it's as easy as setting up an account and buying something on a popular on-line shopping site.
Unfortunately, there are 2 areas which are still unclear to me. In answer to BEagle's point about de-brief: I don't think we're going to see the actual question(s) that candidates fail on, or the wrong answer they gave, so won't be able to de-brief as we do now. Also, I can't see a differentiation between a pass between 75-99% and a fail above 50% in terms of the actual 'areas of weakness' report. Currently, as I understand it, if a candidate passes with some wrong answers, then you can de-brief on the actual wrong items, but if they fail with anything less than 75%, we're not supposed to. The new system will only allow a more generic 'look harder at this area' kind of debrief. The Training Organisation will get a report, as well as the candidate.
The other BIG area is around expiry of the 18 months exam period. The e-Portal system will chop ALL exams and you'll have to start another series if one exam is older than 18 months before they are all passed, whereas the majority of people in the room thought we could merely discard exams as they became 18 months old under the present system. However, one or two people pointed to the Standards Document saying this chop already was in place.. The obvious answer (to me) is not to start the exams until near the end of the flying course and make sure they are done in a more concentrated time frame. It was confirmed that it is NOT a legal requirement to pass Air Law before 1st solo, I don't know where this came from, really.
Bring it on.
TOO