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The UK for example has a much more flexible approach to fuel planning than the FAA's 91.151 etc., and you'll find that the incidence of fuel exhaustion accidents is no higher in the UK than in the US. Will you petition the FAA for repeal of 91.151 then?
No. Because I make it my personal rule to always land with an hour of fuel on board, even when VFR.
Right. And I make it a personal rule to get checked out by an experienced pilot once a year, in exchange for a fee for his time of course. Rules seem to be fine with you as long as they're consistent with your own habits and practices, even though, in a carbon constrained world with AvGas at £2/litre, they seem to be a profit creation scheme for fuel companies. But the ones that are consistent with mine are "bogus safety arguments to perpetuate job schemes for flight examiners".
I'm not quite sure where you get your impression of costs from. My annual MEP/IR renewal costs me about £180, for which I tend to get about 3 hours of the examiner's time, and I almost always derive useful insights. If I didn't have to do the exam, I'm be doing equivalent time in the air practising anyway. And the requirement for an annual IR prof check affects a tiny proportion of the private flying population. And you'd have to offset the cost of the BFR that you're proposing in its place.
My medical costs me £120, just like the other hundred thousand EU pilots (not to mention US pilots) who have to go through the process. For that I get about 30 minutes, and my AME has never found a problem. It's not that I'm ungrateful, but that's a much lower value-cost ratio than I get from the checkride.
Your habit of loading an extra 30 mins of fuel costs you too. CAT burnoffs are of the order of 5% per hour, SEP/MEP probably a bit less as we fly faster relative to best L/D. But if you call it 3%, then carrying an extra 30 mins of fuel than you need will cost you of order 1 minute of fuel per hour you fly. That's of the same order of magnitude of annual spend as a medical or a prof check. But I'm sure the value you get from it is in peace of mind and the time you save not having to do the math...
proudprivate, I'm a firm believer in the idea that regulation should bring a positive benefit-cost in terms of safety. The principle is worth repeating to EASA, and we do, again and again. But you're fixating on a single issue, which doesn't deserve the priority that you want IAOPA to give it. Is it possible that you're as nervous of "demonstrating your competence" to an EU examiner as I would be of demonstrating mine to 421C?
