"Co-Pilot" ATPL

[Ninj43]

Hi all,

Not sure if it is a red herring as a search uncovers nothing, but was speaking to a colleague the other day and he mentioned reading something in Flight about a new ATPL to allow Co-Pilot duties only but with dramatically fewer hours than the current ATPL.

Can anyone elaborate ?

Thanks & Rgds

N|nj

[BEagle]

The appalling 'MPL' licence proposal....

Some way off yet - and hopefully EASA will $hitcan the idea!

[Ninj43]

Apols, 'APL' ?

Thanks

N|nj

[Vee One...Rotate]

Seems like a bit of a silly idea to me. Not sure how you'd define "co-pilot duties". One of the reasons we have multi-crew a/c is redundancy - if one pilot becomes completely incapacitated, the other is qualified enough (at least on paper) to handle things. The idea of having a disparity between the training (NOT experience) received by each crew member seems like a bad idea to me.

Just my 2p.

V1R

[Cabotage Kid]

The multi pilot only IR already exists. What doesn't exist is a training programme especially for multi-pilot. That is the proposal, the programme, not the license. And it is multi-pilot not co-pilot.

Obviously it will involve training in all aspects of multi-pilot ops. Not sure it is essentially a bad thing as it means that any form of single pilot career is out of bounds. It will be extortionately expensive for the self-funded but much cheaper for the likes of BA and their sponsorship style schemes who have all the sims available for which they are aleady paying for.

[Genghis the Engineer]

This has been talked about around the bazaars for a few years. Basically the airlines are saying they don't particularly need pilots with hundreds of hours on PA28s and a little bit of multi experience, they want people qualified to slot into the right hand seat of a multi-crew jet. In affect an ATPL "Co-pilots licence" with a very different emphasis to the current licencing arrangement.

Presumably if enough of the big airlines want it, it'll happen. How far it's got - I've no idea, since I don't operate professionally in the airline world, I just sit on a few committees with "Big Airlines" training captains.

G