If the proposed EIR is accepted and (with additional training) pilots will be allowed to fly airways, out of sight of the surface, to find a hole in the cloud at the destination airfield to land VFR, no doubt French pilots will be grandfathered an EIR as they enjoy all these privileges already on a basic VFR PPL??
To quote IAOPA’s last e-newsletter:
“M Sivel agreed that given British weather, the UK IMC Rating was as important to the UK as the Mountain Rating is to Switzerland, and some way had to be found to maintain current safety levels under EASA. The EASA Working Group FCL008 had been set up to look at the IMC Rating, he said, and if it did not produce an acceptable solution to the problem, then it had failed in its task.”
FCL008 may not have been tasked with saving the IMCr but they darn well need to come up with an acceptable solution.
As seemingly bona fide reports imply that Mr Thorpe is not accurately representing the UK support for the IMCr, I will, for one, be sending a letter to EASA’s Deputy Head of Rulemaking Eric Sivel today.
Personally, even though Mr Thorpe says “claims that the IMC rating improves safety ‘are not supported by the facts’ ”, I can think of several accidents where an IMCr might have avoided fatalities. How many pilots will die because Mr Thorpe thought “responsibility for supporting the IMC rating fell solely to AOPA and was nothing to do with him”??