I was having a discussion with my CFI last night and there seems to be a bit of ambiguity about the rules about solo sign-offs in order to remove the instructor restriction. Now I know that this has been done before but bear with me.
The wording in LASORS says this:
at least 100 hours flight instruction and, in addition, has supervised at least 25 student solo flights
. Now, it is the word
student here that causes the ambiguity for me.
So here’s the question. I’m giving night training to a chap who is a PPL holder and I send him solo (obviously not his initial night solo), can this be counted as a solo sign-off? As this chap is already a PPL, and all he is doing is adding to the privileges of his license, does he still count as a student in the above context?
The reason I ask is that this thought occurred to me. I send my paperwork to the CAA to have my restriction removed, they check the status of the above student and notice that he is already a license holder, they don’t know the times at which he flew so they throw my paperwork back as incorrect!
What do you think?