famous grouse et al
I think I can explain. There follows a cut & paste of a letter to easyJet candidates on the course, which I hope answers most of your questions.
famous grouse, you confess you are new to airline ops. As the others have mentioned, - you need to know this stuff if you wish to be a competent ops bod.
Your discussions with your FAA licenced friends may lead you to believe you don't need this level of study what they perhaps haven't explained is the FAA dispatcher intial and recurrent training the airlines they are dispatching for teach them about aircraft systems etc. Having dispatched in the states myself I can tell you the first place I went was the class room before getting anywhere near the desk. Take a minute and ask them to explain the performance or Ops spec for their airline, you'll find they have an in depth understanding of their trade.
The requirements of the ICAO FOO/FD couse syllabus, are in many areas close to ATPL level studies.
extract of an update letter to easyJet course candidates..
1. Course Materials
There were a number of pagination errors in a few of the books which has led to a bit of confusion, the College has apologised for the printing error and have re-issued the documents where necessary. Also, one or two errors have been found and I'd ask you to contact the College directly if you suspect you have found one.
2. Course Content
As you know, this course has been designed to meet the requirements of ICAO Doc 7192, however, I have had some feedback from some of the students indicating to me, and the course moderators, that perhaps we have gone into too much depth in a few areas. The course moderators met this week (jan 7th) to review this matter and found that indeed, in a few areas, the course did exceed the 7192 study requirements to a limited degree. The areas identified where in the Aircraft Systems - Electrical and Instrumentation. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing as the aim of the course is to ensure you gain a thorough understanding of aircraft operations, however, we do recognise that we must adhere to the 7192 syllabus as closely as we can achieve.
It is impractical to re-issue the course materials at this stage so the moderators agreed that the examination papers would be simplified in these areas to more closely reflect the Doc 7192 requirements. There are no changes to Air Law or Meteorology.
I would recommend that all students continue to, 'study everything', answer the Self Assessment Practice Papers, and complete the Progress Tests. As you are the first students on this new course all markings on the above subjects will be adjusted to take account of the above.
3. Future Modules
The next set of modules will be ready for publication towards May. The moderators are doing an independent review of the next modules to ensure that we do not exceed the ICAO Doc. 7192 requirements. This entails an independent review against the ICAO Syllabus and then reconciliation by the College before publication.
The moderators are:
British Midland International
Monarch Airlines
DHL Air
EasyJet
end..
For those on or considering this course, let me reassure you that the College and the airline moderators are working very hard to keep this to the ICAO syllabus which is the future standard for CAA and JAA operations training. The course is comprehensive, we make no apologies for that, however, it is the first term for this new course and we are refining it as we go along.
There has been a long felt need for an Ops training standard in the UK, now we have it. It isn't easy, neither it should be, we work in a very technical and flight safety related field. We conduct our trade by offering operational control to highly trained pilots who we are expected to converse with, generally at their level or near to, of technical knowledge; we speak to them over radios in their language and often communicate information to them which they use to make decisions. Of course our training has to be an appropriate level and comprehensive.
This course is all things to all men, whether you work for a small regional airline flying light twins to the western isles, or for one of the majors plying trans-polar routes to the west coast of the states. It, just like the ATPL, covers everything so you can operate in any environment.
Hope the above helps.
regards
no sig