FFF
I would never suggest reducing the existing license privileges to match the existing quality of training – selfishly (I fly a well equipped plane and do some 150 hrs/year) I like things just the way they are. But would I let somebody I cared about to fly at night without being able to control and navigate and land (a just good enough ILS at least) on instruments? NO.
Yes there are adequate lights on the ground in the South East but it’s suprising how ambiguous they can be. A 1000-house village might have 100 street lights, a 100-house village might also have 100 street lights. Unless you actually know the area (which you may well do if you fly locally) dead reckoning is no good.
On another tack, one cannot really navigate PPL-style in the min PPL vis of 3km. There will be no horizon at all and few visual cues, unless you fly very low, probably below 1000ft AGL, and given that the reason for the poor vis could be rain or drizzle (ie poor visibility up front) that is risky even in those bits of the UK where there isn’t much sticking up. I did an hour with an instructor once at about 600ft, drizzle, low speed, in c**p vis like that, and it taught me to never try it. But it’s a PPL privilege.
Quite a few CFITs happen this way. The CAA safety seminars are really very very basic but they spend a lot of time going on about exactly this. But they say little about IMC – it’s mostly concentrated on low-time PPL activities and that's mostly the actual audience anyway.
But as I say, we should never complain because the trend of nearly all regulation is to get tighter, not looser.
One can’t incorporate the IMCR in the PPL, and one shouldn’t, not least because the PPL is used by many to fly types completely unsuitable for IMC. But the least the establishment could do is to treat it seriously, rather than putting out the constant bunk about it being a “get out of trouble rating”, or as the worse traditionalists like to say a “get into trouble rating”. Better still, come up with a PPL/IR like the FAA one
