I did say with one exception
Not so; an IR instructor I know who used to be a 170A authorised examiner for a well known southern UK FTO tells me about 25% of the 170A flight tests they did were in his view scams.
And a lot of the punters took 80-100hrs to do their ME IRs (min time is 55hrs).
Yes, he went along with it. One needs the job...
An often expressed sentiment in the trade is that the 170A flight test, which has no set standard so the FTO can repeat it several times, having the punter over a barrel especially at such a late stage in his IR training, has been used to make the FTO's first time IR pass rates (which are published) look good. What isn't published of course is the # of hours they took or how much money they spent.
It may be true that a lot of FAA PPL/IR holders did their JAA IR in the minimum time of 15hrs but that's because they have a lot of instrument experience.
Not quite, you need a recommendation for test
What exactly does that mean in reality? Specifically, is the option to book the IRT direct with the CAA now gone?
I recall reading a CAA document, about a year ago, which basically said that the option to use a 170A examiner from a different FTO is being removed. It used to live
here... I thought this was an odd move, especially in view of Cabair's then very recent bankrupcy and the number of nearly-done-CPL/IRs who were left hanging by their goolies and looking at spending some thousands re-doing some training which they had already done.