Originally Posted by
By George
It is no different coming out of an Airline with years of training experience, you still need the GA ratings. Even more bizarre under the new rules before you can be promoted to be a training captain within the Airlines you have to have an instructor rating. I have witnessed several senior captains who have been out of GA for 30 years going off to the local to get a Grade 3 so they can become a training captain. It is one thing to master the dreaded Cessna 150 after a Boeing or an Airbus but that FOI Exam, or whatever they call it, is a little doozy. I have never read anything quite like it.
'Tis the rules chaps and flexibility or common sense is a strict liability.
It's very different, the person in this instance was a qualified Air Force instructor. Which for all intents is probably a higher qualification than a CASA FIR. Airline pilots are just pilots, and unless they were previous instructors have no experience in training and the problems associated with such. There is no part of a CPL or ATPL that covers training activities and methods of instruction.
As far as I know its still not a requirement to hold a FIR to be a training captain, although it's been constantly talked about for a while.