Looks like a case of under-regulation here...
On the one hand the law only requires two things:
- A one-hour training flight which can be straight line with no actual training being done. Signed by the instructor only for "I did this training flight", not for "student has reached the required standard". May be annotated with "has not reached required standard" but this has no legal meaning whatsoever.
- The examiners signature which only verifies that the experience and training requirements have been met, based on logbook content. (And note: if your local examiner refuses to sign, you can always send the lot to the CAA who will then sign for a small fee.)
- Oh, and there's a "suggestion" in LASORS as to the content of the training flight but it's not law.
On the other hand, instructors and examiners have a "duty of care" or whatever you call it. In case of an owner-pilot, the instructor he flies with is perhaps the only person ever to see that the pilot is a danger to himself, his passengers and people on the ground, but has no legal means to do anything about it. Other than trying to convince the pilot of this.
In this respect the FAA BFR system seems to make more sense. You actually have to reach a certain standard before the instructor will sign you off. But this actually puts the instructor into a sort of examiners role, for which he might not be trained, and which might negatively influence the training aspect of the flight - student being afraid of trying out something and getting it wrong, thus failing the BFR, for instance.
And in any case both the FAA and JAA system doesn't stop an owner-pilot to go flying with an expired CofA/PTF and an expired or non-current license.
Personally, I would not mind seeing the FAA BFR system being copied here in JAA land, especially if that also removes some of the bureaucratic burden that we have now (five-year license renewal + fees for instance).