Consequently my hard earned FAA/IR is underused and only gets put into service when I hire in USA.
If you're whittling about £1,000.00 spent (BTW the flyer group didn't pay anything like that sum), that's what has to be done at present:
My only point was
why does it take the best part of a year and £1000 to gain some IR exams? Why not allow self study, exams taken at a local centre and not Gatwick, no residential courses, etc....Why not remove 90% of the extraneous bull from them and make them one "IR" paper? Yes I appreciate this is the way it is now, but that doesn't make it right.
As for the FLyer group, I have the costs somewhere as I was going to be one of them, may have been discounted to £900 I think due to the number of people enrolling. I pulled out as I wanted to wait and see what EASA would bring us - maybe they will end up recognising my FAA IR ? Who knows....