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Old 9th Nov 2011, 10:25
  #352 (permalink)  
IO540
 
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Nobody is going to be designing special procedures for GA. It's simply not going to happen in Europe, in much of which GA is all but nonexistent anyway.

This has been done many times here but the main issues in the "IFR department" are not aviation related but political.

Being political does not make them any less real or problematic, of course.

There is also a lot of emotion around the whole subject of IFR, nearly all of which is not based on any safety data and is propagated by old prejudices. Nearly all commercial aviation runs in the IFR system, and the amount of work one has to do to become an ATP makes everybody involved very guarded about any newcomers into the system who appear to have done less to get in than the present incumbents.

For European IFR, as approved by the European axe grinders, there are certain things which are absolutely not negotiable:

1) Whatever you do, a "Euro IR" must not be like the FAA IR. "FAA", "USA" etc are dirty words in European aviation regulation, and in most of the training system for both commercial pilots and ATCOs. So any new IR has to differ in key respects. But EASA has ostensibly nailed its flag to the "ICAO" mast and while this is the key factor here which is enabling progress, one can push this only so far.

2) One is not allowed to state the truth that the UK IMCR is a full IR in all but name, and only the UK's extensive Class A separates the "amateurs" from the "pros". An IMCR holder who has been trained by a real IFR-flying instructor will be able to fly any published approach plate for any airport in the world. SIDs and STARs are not covered but are relative trivia. Nearly the entire difference between the IMCR and the IR is the currency of the holder and his aircraft capability and equipment, but that is nothing to do with the bits of paper. But the only other Euro country with lots of Class A is Italy, so the IMCR concept is not transportable to the rest of Europe because it would be a full IR in most of it. The 1800m vis is a non-issue most of the time (it is practically fog). I know the JAA IR flight test is harder than the IMCR flight test, but the JAA IR flight test is also a lot easier in say Spain or Greece than it is in the UK...

3) Speaking of the EIR, if you got too close to allowing approaches, it would be a full IR, but you can't do that

I have no inside track on what is going to happen, but I suspect that the EIR may get tossed into the melting pot at the end, as a quid pro quo to get the CBM IR accepted. One does the same thing in Planning applications In that respect, the EIR is vitally important, otherwise any difficulties on the CBM IR will result in its termination, and in the continuation of the present ridiculous 50/55hr JAA IR route which very very few private pilots have been doing since JAA came along in 1999 (most went N-reg).

There is a long way to go on this stuff. The CBM IR is going to become a political hot potato for some other reasons.

Last edited by IO540; 9th Nov 2011 at 10:38.
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