I think that sacrificing the IMCR without a real world alternative (an achievable PPL/IR or a European version of the FAA PPL/IR) would be fatal and trying to get anything like an IR-lite set up post IMC abolition would be impossible. Rather akin to trying to find a job when unemployed, or trying to find a girlfriend when you're single
WSMempson
My worry here is that saving the so called IMCR in its current form or rather how it has come to be used MAY be counterproductive! Why?
The IMCR was initially created as a get out of trouble rating. For a pure VFR pilot any level of instrument training has to increase his chances of surving in cloud.
Theoretically EASA could accept the safety benefits of incorporating instrument flying into the latter part of the PPL syllabus and achieve those safety goals by increasing the costs of achieving a PPL and by doing so making the situation more safe because all PPLs would be instrument trained.
By that path they would achieve an even greater safety result than having some PPLs with negligable instrument traing and those who now get an IMCR.
The problem is not that but how the IMCR has been used by PPLs since. They can and do takeoff into a 600 cloudbase fly out of controlled airspace for 100 odd miles and fly an Ils to a landing at their destination airport.
This is the part that will be hard to sell to EASA and there is a definate dIvision between the two aims A a get out of trouble instrument capability pilot and B the quasi mini IR that it has developed into in the UK.
NO way can you sell 15 hrs of instrument training as any form of IR to EASA.
Hence why I feel it would be better to put all efforts into a more easely NON professional PPL IR than taking the risk that EASA may accept the original concept of the IMCR and regulate to that effect and in the process IMCR Holders loose all rights to knowingly takeoff into instrument conditions while at the same time seeing a possible PPL IR evaporate in front of their eyes.
The only power we have is to persuade on the safety front for either a PPL IR or an IMCR but I Doubt we would get both.
Pace