Originally Posted by Mark M'Words
I've been flying for more than.....well put it this way when I started sex was safe and flying was fun! Now I've three kids and eldest daughter who knows daddy flies planes asked if I could take her flying in a little aeroplane, well the lump in my throat was probably visible but manfully I managed to hold in the tear.
I've 15000 hours, UK ATPL, US ATP, 757 Captain, so I thought a quick phone call to the friendly people at the CAA would help. Now I know I've not flown a single piston for a while now but the requirements to revalidate ones PPL privilages are nothing short of amazing, that allied to the cost of private flying in the UK means flight simulation on the computer will have to do for now.
I fully understand that flying commercially with the autopilot in is totally different to flying around the west coast of Scotland on a nice day, but the controls still work in the same sense don't they. I naiively thought a couple of hours or so with an instructor, quick check and of you go, but it's not to be. Is anyone else out there equally bemused?
So in 15k hours you've presumably learned a lot about airmanship, earned a great deal of money, and done more proficiency checks than most of us will ever need to.
And you've been told that you (I'm guessing) need to fly a few hours with an instructor and re-take your GFT to fly P1 in an aeroplane that is, roughly speaking, ½% of the weight of anything you've flown in the last 20 years, with reversible controls (again probably something you've not flown in a couple of decades), almost entirely in VFR - which again will be something you've done relatively little of.
This is in an environment where there's a well established track record, before the rules were changed, of high hour ATPLs bending little aeroplanes because they didn't feel they needed (re?)conversion training.
The problem is exactly what?
G