It never ceases to surprise me that people routinely emerge from what is, by common consent, one of the tougher IR training processes, lacking the ability to file basic airways flightplans and to determine routings
Ah yes, but we are taught to fly a near-perfect hold so that ATC can't tell from the radar trace that it's not being done by the auto-pilot, which is
far more important.....!
I have to agree... I've just finished my IR, and I'm following this thread with interest. My IR did take me outside controlled airspace to Blackpool, but since Blackpool itself has ATC they provided a RIS and arranged our joining clearance for us as we left them. We never went into a field which didn't have ATC. No criticism of my instructors, who were excellent, but maybe of the syllabus itself?
In fact, I suggested to my IR instructor that the syllabus could be changed so that the test is split into two parts. The first part is flown in the aircraft, at the home airfield, and consists of the upper airwork including engine failures, a hold, a non-precision approach and a precision approach, and that's all. The rest of the test, I reckon, should be flown in a simulator. Candidates should be presented with an airways chart for somewhere in the world, and given a route to plan. Doing it in the sim means it can, quite literally, be anywhere in the world, so it would not be possible to learn the routes as we currently do. IR candidates would
have to be taught how to plan a route from scratch, how to fly a SID from the plate rather than from memory, how to handle ATC sending you to a reporting point you've never heard of, etc.... all those things which are likely to happen in the real world.
Any thoughts???
FFF
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