Absolutely agreed on the 402 point.
Which ray is the truth?
The ATPL subjects in SA are now valid for five years from successful completion?
The ATPL subjects in SA are now valid for five years from the first partial?
The ATPL subjects in SA are now valid for five years from the date of each sucesful IR renewal?
The ATPL subjects in SA are now valid for two years from successful completion in accordance with Part 61?
The ATPL subjects in SA are now valid for two years from succesful completion or from a partial pass?
The list goes on and on and seems to be ever so slightly changeable, depending upon to whom one speaks.
Nonetheless, it seems apparent enough that, whichever of the above options is correct,there is plenty of time from successfully completing the ATPL subjects and before they expire, in which to accumulate the flying hours required for an ATPL.
The drill always used to be that one wrote, or perhaps even had to write, Com first. This meant that by the time one got around to writing the ATPL subjects, one usually had well over two hundred hours - the basic minimum for Commercial Licence issue. Some of the problems today are exacerbated by the fact that chaps are leaping straight in to the ATPL without having accumulated any flying hours of significance while holding a CPL. Thus, some of them will battle to fly the required hours in the time available, or certainly would have when that subject expiration limit was set at two years. The logical progression of licensing was never intended to be this way around. An ATPL was a licence that one thought of when a reasonable amount of flying experience had been obtained and when it was sensible to suppose that one's career path would benefit from such a licence. It was never intended as a beginner's entry point to aviation licensing.
