Unfortunately, I believe that unless we can get a Eurowide "mini IR" (Call it eIMCr or IWR) then the IMCr is gone.
My feeling is that we stand virtually no chance of getting an exemption to allow it to be used in the UK only, so it has got to be expanded to the rest of Europe in some form or another, with European support. And unfortunately it appears AOPA and PPL/IR do not support a Eurowide rating because they believe (or at least some in their executive committees) that it will undermine their attempts at an "easily obtainable" IR. They will of course support retaining the UK rating, if they didn't they couldn't justify taking our money in subs....but I suspect they know full well that there is not much hope.
Cutting a bit of ground school does not make the IR obtainable, especially with Euro training prices (cost is the real issue). The only REAL way to get an obtainable IR is to cut costs, which means having a 2 stage process with reduced hours for the first stage, upgradeable when required.
I'm not sure why AOPA are running and "IMC usage" survey? Why do they need to do that, why not just look at the statistics and see how many were issued?
Last edited by englishal; 10th Feb 2008 at 23:24.