Leo45. Well I disagree.
SPIC is a TOTAL waste of time. Do you think instructors actually sit there and do absolutely nothing unless they are about to fly into a mountain? Even if they did do nothing then their mere presence onboard detracts totally from the character building merit of solo flight. You just DON'T get scared if there is an instructor on board pretending not to be there.
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For those who don't know Student Pilot In Command is a JAA invention. A student flies the aircraft with an instructor on board. The instructors only role is to avert crashing into mountains etc. Under the old system SOLO time meant just that. Under JAA a lot of "solo" time is actually SPIC and logged as such.
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Hell you can do a whole JAA CPL IR course without ever once flying a twin solo. How the heck does that compare to CAP509 when you sent 2 students off together to go and beacon bash their way around the UK for hours on end.
You raise the point of instructor standards. They were much higher under CAP509. Under the JAA all a school has to do is take any old instructor up for a few hours and half heartedly log some often spurious groundschool hours with him/her. They then sign off their own instructors and thats it. As you well know under CAP509 the CAA themselves assessed and passed/failed candidate 509 instructors. They were vigourous and demanding in their assessment and this resulted in only quite good instructors gaining the coveted 509 status.
Then there was the myriad other CAP509 requirements that people hardly ever saw. Like maximum class sizes and ratios of floorspace to seats in classrooms approved for CAP509 groundschool.
CAP509 was a comprehensive scheme designed by the major FTO's, the CAA and airlines working together. It had rigorous standards that cost money.
JAA by comparison has been decided by committee has minimal standards applied and still costs money.
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