WWW I would not say that the former CAP509 course was far superior to a JAA integrated course.
I could agree that SPIC flights are a bit a waste of time as opposed to mutual sorties, that CAP 509 instructors had to be formally trained and eventually examined by the CAA as opposed to their JAA colleagues.
However when it comes to the product (i.e the sudents) the quality has hardly anything to do with the school/ training format etc..
At the end of the day, the average Joe Bloggs coming out of an integrated course or CAP509 is a bit out of his depth when he's got to do a SID other than the two he's done zillions of times at his base school, when it comes to land in serious crosswinds, when it comes to fly on his own without an instructor or a fellow student holding his hand when the weather is a bit dark and blowy, when he's got to perform an approach down to minima all on his own etc...
I have nothing against low hours pilots. As an ex- flying instructor in one of these so called "leading schools", I had the privilege to fly with outstanding students (mostly sponsored cadets but not always). Their performances had hardly anything to do with the school or syllabus or my teaching. They were gifted in the first place. Unfortunately this is a small minority.
For the rest of the crowd, they just got their ticket and whether it was from OATS,BAe,CABAIR,SFT or god knows where, it did not matter. If they just attended the course without having an inquisitive mind and a bit of curiosity, the result was poor.
As an air taxi pilot flying with some of them (whether ex CAP509 or JAA integrated course), I am appalled (but not surprised) at the lack of operational knowledge they display. Very few can file a flight plan correctly, give an ETA or transform litres of avgas in kg or pounds from the top of their, sometimes, big heads.
As for the CAP509 instructors, I heard one or two of my very experienced colleagues teaching stupid things, just because they were applying recipes without thinking a single nanosecond.
Here an example of what I'm getting at:
At the school I used to teach in, students were told to check 60 degrees before the inbound track in an NDB hold that the ADF on the RMI was indicating the inbound radial, the ADF having about 10 degrees of dip. Fine.
The problem is they were also told to do exactly the same thing in a base turn or race track procedure which could have been 8 miles away from the beacon!!!! A bit of basic trigonometry or common sense would have been nice on this occasion. Don't you think so?
I could bore you with many other examples like this one.
So, please, spare me the standard bull**** and all the rest.The UK "training standards" did not lose out. Things are just carrying on the same way. Dear, dear...
