AVTECH 2000

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DH Love

The basis for the licensing of aircrew,ops & flight dispatch originates in ICAO and is implimented by the national aviation authority (and in Europe JAR/EASA). For Flight Operations Officers and Flight dispatchers licensing the syllabus is defined in ICAO Doc. 7192 D3 as a 'recommedation' not an ICAO standard (i.e. requirement). The UK has never adopted ops officer licensing. The US FAA Flight Dispatcher licence is to a different syllabus and is US specific in its requirements.

İn years past, and in absence of a formal ops qualification requirement by our UK regulator (CAA), the City of Guild of London acreditted an operations officer course at two levels, basic Aviation Studies and Advanced. These course were indeed accepted (but not required) by the industry (i.e. ops managers who were recruiting ops staff) as sound qualification in ops studies and a C&G certificate was issued. East Surrey College and later AVTECH2000 offered the courses and training materials for the C&G exams.

However, in the past 2-3 years the JAA has included a requirement that JAROPS1 AOC holder ops officer training should be to the ICAO 7192 D3 syllabus. EASA are now also working on this issue to, last I heard, the ICAO 7192 D3 syllabus. So, European airlines will be looking for an ICAO based qualifcation.

The last AVTECH materials I saw were indeed dated and sadly the course was too dated for use. The Glasgow College course, originated at UK airlines request in 2002 - not by the college, and was a response to the introduction of the JAROPS1 requirement that ops officer training should be to the internationally recognised 7192 D3 syllabus. The early teething problems have long since been resolved.

The FAA Flight Dispacther Licence has become a de facto UK qualifcation in absence of anything else, and is of course widely accepted, particularly as the FAA system of regulation has been exported to many countries around the world, the middle east in particular. Although a valuable qualification, and it has served me well over the years, had an ICAO course been available to me when I started in the industry I would have done that first, then perhaps do the FAA licence if you wish. Why? simply because the ICAO qualifcation is much more comprehensive in its syllabus and is an international generic qualifcation based in ICAO and not specific to the US FAA's flight dispatch system, weather and regulations. The FAA license syllabus assumes that the airline will continue a dispatchers training once recruited and also excludes several importants subjects, navigation as an example. This to me is significant.

As jumpseater suggested you can readback over this forum and see how this argument has developed on these pasges this 3-4 years. The FAA license is of course a valuable ticket, however, look where Europen airlines are being taken by EASA in this regard and, can I suggest you do take a look at the ICAO based course GCNS offers and compare with the FAA syllabus and make your decision. If you plan to work outside Europe or with a US carrier then do the FAA license first.

I will differ with jumpseater here. Were I recruiting and had two equal candidates in all other respects, I would chose the ICAO 7192 D3 course certificate holder to the FAA license, simply on the basis that the ICAO course is more relevant to European operations and more comprehensive in its content.

PS Rampi's recent post on Dispatch Licence in Europe is of interest to this discussion.