For those who are doing their flight training with a view to obtaining a JAA frozen ATPL by converting an FAA CPL, the PIC requirements are far too onerous to be dismissed as lightly as has been suggested.
It is, as has been said, 500 hrs of P1
post CPL issue. So, any previous P1 hours are not applicable. Period. End of chat.
This means, at the very least, 500 hrs of hour building. That's a lot of hour-building! 500 hours spent burning holes in the sky (and wallet) in a C152 is a lot of time to develop dodgy habits and get mind-numbingly bored.
In reality it will probably mean that people wanting to go down the FAA-to-JAA conversion route will probably have to be FI's for some length of time. And FAA FI's at that. I suspect that this is why the 'post-CPL' comment is in there, the JAA want you to have 500 hours of
'CPL-type' experience.
I'd be interested to know whether this is going to replace the existing arrangements or act in parallel with them. For example, get the 500hrs PIC if you want to sit the reduced JAR exams OR sit all the JAA ATPL's if you want to convert sooner. Sadly, I suspect the former is the case. This could leave a few of us in the poop, especially those who have already committed to doing their FAA ratings.
This needs watching with interest. As somebody else said, this smacks to me of JAA protectionism again to some extent. Meh, perhaps I'm being unfair, but some of us remember a few years ago when they tried to stop any JAA training occuring outside of JAA member states...
