Hello Homeguard
I do agree on most of your remarks, and confronting positions is interesting.
No, you are right, students are not stupid. And I would even say : qualified pilots are often more stupid than students :-)
Why ? Because gaining confidence and habits have bad "secondary effects" on you, on me, on everybody.
And I do agree with you, "decision making" should be more emphasized in the IR training as well. We slowly improve on that field, but there is still room for improvement.
I said I flew with some poor-skilled IMC rated pilots, but I'm sure they are some talented, do not worry.
And they are also some poor-skilled IR pilots, I flew with some of them, whatever FAA or JAA rated.
The quality of the training does not depend on the rule or on the syllabus, but mainly on the school and the serious of the student.
And once you're rated, it depends only on you.
Rules are a guideline, but the final result do not depend only on them.
Why applying flight hours minimum instead of just competency ?
Hard to say. Even in the US they have difficulty to make a decision on that. Right now you renew your IR just by flying a minimum number of approaches every 6 months + holdings + tracking/intercepting stuff, but they think about requesting also a minimum of flight hours maybe.
As I said, I do not make rules, I just apply them.
But if I had to make them, I would not be comfortable in that role, because it is really not an easy one.
No rule is perfect, that's the reason why they are modified, and improved, as time goes by, and they try to take into consideration all different human behaviors and all possibilities.
A rule is a kind of "compromise" between what is expected, experienced, known statistics, and a kind of "guess" about the future.
We recently had a student, CAA IR rated, for an FAA IR.
He flew the airplane pretty well, no problem with his IMC flying, he was very sharp.
But...
=> He came without clearing the customs, and without even knowing he needed to between UK and France.
=> His approach plates were completely outdated (year 2002) and he tried to convince me that those differences since then were "not really important".
=> He had no IR flight time endorsed in the logbook by any instructor (it is the second time we have that problem with a UK pilot... Why instructors do not endorse logbooks in UK? Is that normal on your side of the Channel ?)
=> His answers to basic oral preparation questions were false (about regulation, ATC, what would you do in case of radio failure, use of GPS in IFR, etc).
On the other hand, we teach a young UK girl for a multiengine IR.
She has just a PPL, not more, not even an IMC, but she is really sharp, she studies, she listens carefully, she understands everything, she makes good decisions, so she will be ready in a very short period of time.
Someone above proposed that approach minimums would be raised for private IR pilots (+200 on a precision, +250 on a non-precision, if I remember well).
I do not agree with that.
If your minima are raised, then you will probably more often go for a missed-approach, and performing several approaches is more dangerous than only one, because you get tired, nervous, etc.
Moreover, diverting is a really more hazardous thing than performing the approach to the legal minimums.
I know some pilots who self-raised their minimums when they feel they did not train enough recently, and of course I respect that decision they make.
But I think that should not be a legal thing, only a personal decision.
Over
Frog