PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Information on EASA FCL?
View Single Post
Old 29th Sep 2010, 20:59
  #184 (permalink)  
421C
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: London
Posts: 423
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
I had to take myself to Kidlington and do a very expensive civilian IR in order to get my civilian licence.

If I could do that (as all of us had to) why do you guys think that you are so precious or so very special that you don't have to do what it takes?

Why do you spend so much time and effort trying to beat the system?
JW,

You have got me agreeing with Fuji for once! On the one hand, you are right, if you have to do the JAA stuff, it's doable. But the issue many of us have is the sheer, dismal, sad pointlessness of European over-regulation as it impacts GA.

You may have been happy doing your IR as a pro, but for GA, the European IR is an irrelevance. There are probably 100,000 non-commercial IR holders in the US. How many people have knuckled down to the JAA PPL/IR? I suspect it's in the order of 1000 across all of Europe in the entire history of JAR-FCL.

Is JAA private operation any safer than the US? No. Is Europe difficult and more special? No. I believe the US has greater extremes of terrain and weather and manages a mix of GA and CAT traffic in super-busy TMAs and airports which is inconceivable in Europe. Does American safety suffer or European safety benefit? No.

The people who suffer aren't just the European (potential) pilots denied reasonable access to 'mainstream' (ie. non- light/sport) GA. The US earns billions of dollars in GA exports and sustains (?) 100,000 jobs through GA. What do we have in the UK below the level of Airbus and military hardware? Our centre of GA manufacturing I guess is the Isle of Wight, making a few Islanders a year and assembling Cirrus kits. It's not just manufacturing. Look around many provincial airports. The GA maintenance and ancilliary industries are often in a few rusting hangars amongst the airport property converted to warehouses and call centres and whatnot. Go to an equivalent US airport and you'll find FBOs and specialist GA companies employing hundreds of people in decent quality jobs.

We manage a "playing field" for CAT which enables a pretty efficient and competitive airline sector. Our lowco model seems comparable to the US - we do not seem short of airlines with funny names flying between obscure provincial towns in Europe. That's a good thing for the industry and for pax. Why can't we have a proportionate regulatory environment for GA? It's beyond me.

I've been writing on this thread to explain the EASA process and rules as best I can. Doesn't mean I like it.

(BTW, although I'm an N-reg man, I've done my JAA IR conversion and IRI. All good fun stuff and great people. But the instructors, examiners and what I learned would have been the same without the overlay of JAA cost and paperwork and approvals and other nonsense. It doesn't take £1000 of 'approved' manuals to learn the theory compared to $20 US books or the excellent handbooks the FAA publish for free. The list is endless.)
421C is offline