RPPL START DATE
To answer the first question the RPPL came into being on December 1st 1962.
While in print I will bore you all with the following story if I may.
I was training for my CPL and Instructor rating at the time. Our Club had two worthies who were rushing to get through under the old system. To avoid the new system they needed to pass their PPL flight test by November 30th and the Examiner was scheduled to visit on November 28th.
They had done all of the training required for the old system, except for the three hour solo cross country, which they were booked to fly on the Sunday 25th. However, on that day the weather really foul, so our worthy CFI, who always had an “interpretive” approach to the Regulations, decided that they should fly in company and that I should fly with one of them to keep an eye on them both.
The CFI’s rationale was that I was not yet an instructor, so it wasn’t really dual, nor could I be considered to be a passenger, so it was all perfectly legit. Right! I guess if my pilot had crashed I would have been deemed to be the PIC and would have taken the blame. Anyway we flew at very low level in poor visibility along the coast to a prominent headland and back, so effectively nil navigation value to any of us.
At one point I asked my pilot the name of the town we were approaching. He correctly identified it and when I asked him the basis of his identification, expecting a learned answer, He allowed that he recognised the Pub as it was a favourite watering hole of his.
I guess we were just pioneering ICUS (In Command Under Supervision) although in the case of the soloist’s it was more like “In Command Under Surveillance”.