I find it very hard after all of these years to side with CASA on just about anything, however they do have some reasons that I think are worthwhile. In addition, the RAAF has done little to make anything to do with civil licences easy for their pilots. CASA used to certainly recognise all graduates of RAAF Flying Instructors Course for a Grade 3 rating. The RAAF course whether on Macchi or PC9/A up until No.100 FIC (1989 I think) prepared all instructors for Ab Initio instruction. At 100FIC they decided that they were over training the 2FTS instructors and then assumed that they only needed advanced instruction. For example, if you taught spinning you assumed that Bloggs had already done spinning at BFTS and you were just showing them how to do it in a different platform. In classic RAAF planning the ‘powers to be’ decided soon after to try ‘all through PC9/A training’. Guess what, they had few people with Ab Initio experience at 2FTS and had to conduct a number of PC9/A transitions on some BFTS instructors and post them to Pearce. After 2 courses they came to the same conclusion as they did when they tried the same thing with the Macchi, years earlier. Just as well the world is now very different and RAAF is ‘all through PC21/A training! I think RAAF is the only operator doing all through PC21/A training. And no it’s not simulators that have helped. I assume that provided CASA and the RAAF discuss this, the change to PC21/A with everyone now doing Ab Initio training should end up with all recents FIC graduates able to get a Grade 3. Dont hold your breath!
Beez.