Logging of Instrument Flight Time open to faking
The Australian 31 May has an ad for an RFDS management pilot. It stipulates among other things the applicant must have at least 8 instrument rating renewals, not less than 6000 hours command and 600 hours instrument flight time. Not bad qualifications for someone flying a light twin turbo-prop.
A CASA audit of a pilots claimed flying hours is a matter of going through past records. It may be time consuming of course. An audit of claimed instrument flight time is a different matter since there is no way the truth of such hours can be independently verified. It is not uncommon to see obvious discrepancies between claimed instrument flight hours in a pilot's log book compared with his total experience. For example there is anecdotal evidence that Cathay Pacific interview boards watch closely for this situation.
Once the pilot completes his initial command instrument rating course at a flying school, where CASA only has to check his progress record to verify true instrument flight time hours, there is usually no further verification of instrument flight time during a pilots career. In fact it is well known that some pilots log a set amount of instrument flight time hours for every flight; notwithstanding IMC never existed.
The RFDS would be well advised to keep in mind that dishonest logging of instrument flight time is rife in the industry and there is no way they can verify a candidate's claimed instrument flight time hours. Further still, because it is legal to log time spent on automatic pilot in IMC it is quite probable the majority of the claimed instrument flight time was spent monitoring an autopilot.
So if 600 hours instrument flight time is one criteria for getting a job as a KingAir pilot in the RFDS, it is not a reliable indication of the candidates flying experience on instruments - especially if autopilot time is included. In short, the RFDS selection board are fooling themselves since there will never be a reliable method of ensuring the 600 claimed hours are indeed verifiable and true hours. In that case, what's the point of demanding a certain qualification when there is no way of confirming its veracity?
Three experienced airline pilots with whom I have been associated with for many years and whose logged instrument flight time was hand flying only (in other words not on autopilot), the total flight time in their log books versus their instrument flight time was:
Pilot 1 15,000 hours of which 700 were hand flown in IMC.
Pilot 2 11,000 hours of which 520 were hand flown in IMC.
Pilot 3. 23,500 hours of which 1470 were hand flown in IMC.
Compare those "honest" hours with one character now safely esconsed in a major overseas airline who got his job with a total of 5200 total hours of which he claimed over 2500 hours on instruments while flying an Aussie Boeing 727 and DC9... Autopilots are wonderful things.