Now,now,now, boys and girls. No need to go on like this.
I’m getting a little confused now. What is an IMC rating for...if not flying in IMC. A holder is not allowed in class A airspace so there are only the open FIR and the lower categories of CAS left. If a radar service is available, you use it, if not, too bad. Before we get too excited about the insanity of it all, lets remember what the conditions were when the quadrantal system was first devised. Most aircraft were non-radio and radar wasn’t invented. There were probably not a lot fewer aircraft about (and a vast increase during the war) so what scenario were its inventors contemplating?
Improbable though it may seem this version of Russian roulette doesn’t produce a crop of collisions. Like IanSeager, I can’t recall one since Richard Hillary, 1942, Spit/Oxford (?) though there must have been some, whereas I can recall easily, periodical VFR mid-airs.
Perfect safety is an illusion. We can have degrees of safety at different prices. The UK IR was always very expensive. Perverse nonsense about training to a high standard from which you were expected to deteriorate. The advent of JAR has now put its cost onto a stratospheric trajectory. £15K upwards. 6 weeks off work for groundschool and exams. The IMC rating though, costs about £1500 and a few evening classes. No time off work necessary. No contest. Difference in cost 10:1 Diff. in utility 2:1 Diff. in safety ?:1
BTW, please can someone tell me what is so miraculous about the airspace south of 50º N that, instantaneously, all the rules should change? Semi-circular rule applies; VFR allowed on lower airways at L+500’; IMC rating not recognised (although I read that the French recognise its advantages and are starting to train and test for it in the UK!).
I appears to be common ground that the JAR is a disaster for GA. Just as we start to regain independence from our American friends and allies after nearly sixty years of neo-colonial rule ;-), we hand the initiative back by producing gobbledygook like this. Is it another manifestation of the sort of European restrictive practices and bureaucracy that hobble us commercially? The NPPL gets around one part of the problem that JAR has created. To overcome the stratospheric cost of an IR, what about allowing IFR on the lower airways, up to FL115 say, by IMC rating holders after a supplementary test? Where better to start a ‘pilot’ scheme for this than on Alpha 25? Glasgow to Toulouse via points west. Introduced nationally, this one move would reduce at a stroke a lot of the off airway flogging around in IMC, which is actually the most taxing IFR regime on the pilot. It would make for a much more relaxed and safe environment for all. Might increase ATC workload a mite............
Since I have drifted far from TFG’s original quick question, I’ve started another thread. Whaddyathink?
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Yaberdaberdoo
That's OK Boo-Boo