Actually you asked for an overview. There is no overview that I am aware of, and as expected you have received a few comments regarding the status quo, which was clearly formulated by a committee with no regard for practicality or safety.
Even the current CAA Policy Dept cannot grasp that experience gained as an FI under another regime builds the same level of judgement as training for a JAA licence. They have restricted FIs with up to 2000 hours claiming they are not JAA hours, and then remove the Restriction on the basis of a meaningless sign off from a non existent CFI. All about as stupid as you can get.
The UK issue a Specific FI(Restricted) rating; there is no such thing in JAR-FCL which simply says: "the privileges of the FI rating will be restricted until" In some States it's left to the FI to apply the Restriction, nothing in their licence identifies if it has been done or not!
Last edited by Whopity; 2nd Jan 2011 at 23:50.