Overnight the caa went from saying that an ICAO IR kept your exams live to you will have to sit them again if your JAR IR is out by 7 years. As you might expect this has screwed quite a few pros in the middle east.
I have heard this from elsewhere, very recently, too, affecting some non-UK ATPs.
Surely that is legally actionable, if the pilot can find a written statement on the previous situation? We are talking a very big economic loss in re-doing the stuff.
Answer was this from CAA:
Up to 5 years IRE can renew.
Over 5 years CAA Staff test again.
Over 7 years CAA Staff test again + retake all the exams.
That is super info, thank you, but presumably you want to get that in writing so if they go back on it you can pursue it appropriately
What I am thinking is that I don't need to renew the JAA IR until the EASA FCL dual-paper requirement is clarified, which won't be before April 2014. An IR check flight will be £150 for the IRE plus the flight. I don't mind the flight (the practice is always good) but the £150 seems a waste if you don't need it. I can bang ILSs for far less than that, with a free safety pilot.
He like me is hoping for the IMC to transfer to an EASA licence, at some stage, as all this becomes expensive.
And if you do no need airways, or do long distances IMC usually does the job.
It did me pretty well for my pre-2006 long trips, but having had the IR since then I would not want to go back to "official VFR" because of various foreign ATC practices which screw one up right when least expected.
It's totally perverted that one puts all that work into getting the IR, only to do trips like
this where one logs ~20hrs of which ~10mins is instrument time.
If one did such a trip under VFR, the instrument time would be a lot higher (but obviously you would not want to log it
) and there would be a much higher risk of icing, etc, because you don't have airspace access.
Not sure about the FAA situation regarding exams,
They never lapse. If you fall out of the 6/6 IR rolling currency, you do an IPC. The PPL ones never expire; you just do a BFR at any time. Demonstrated competence = very sensible. But the regulator makes no money out of that, because the renewal is done with a freelance instructor...
but seven years seems to have always been the term at which you needed to do them again, under JAR anyway.
I don't think so - if you flew on another ICAO IR in the meantime and could prove it.
Yes the exams are rubbish.