FI(A) renewal - validity of instructional experience in a non-JAR country?

[Trim Stab]

I hold FI(A) and am currently working as an instructor on a MEP in non-JAR country.

There is no requirement where I am working to be a CRI on the MEP - it was merely required that I had a certain minimum experience on the aircraft, which I easily exceeded.

Will my instructing experience here be valid towards renewal of my FI(A)?

My reading of the regulations suggests that it should count as the regulations only require a minimum number of hours of instruction. There is no requirement that the instruction should be on a particular class or type.

[BEagle]

Presumably your FI(A) rating is also valid on multi-engined aircraft and you hold a JAR-FCL Multi Engine Piston Class Rating?

[Trim Stab]

Yes, I hold a JAR-FCL MEP rating, but I do not hold a JAR-FCL MEP CRI.

My qualifications have been validated by the local authority as there is no requirement here for a specific multi-engine instructional qualification. They only required an instructor qualification, and minimum experience on the aircraft type.

[BEagle]

So, wherever you are talking about doesn't require its MEP instructors to be anything other than spamcan FIs with some time on the aeroplane in question? Who actually assesses that such MEP instructors are capable of delivering ME instruction?

The LASORS 2012 (and CAP 804) requirement is:

Complete at least 50 hours of flight instruction on aeroplanes as FI, CRI, IRI or as Examiner during the period of validity of the rating, including at least 15 hours of flight instruction within the 12 months preceding the expiry date of the FI rating...

If you don't hold a multi-engine extension to your FI Rating, you cannot really have been conducting 'flight instruction on aeroplanes as FI'.

If you don't hold a CRI Rating, you cannot really have been conducting 'flight instruction on aeroplanes as CRI'.

Sorry, but I don't really see that the CAA will feel well disposed towards accepting instructional time for which you don't actually hold the relevant JAR-FCL qualifications. But don't accept my opinion as gospel - check with them.

[Trim Stab]

So, wherever you are talking about doesn't require its MEP instructors to be anything other than spamcan FIs with some time on the aeroplane in question? Who actually assesses that such MEP instructors are capable of delivering ME instruction?


My colleagues don't hold any civil qualifications at all. The CFI is an ex A2QFI on a single engine jet. They employed me because of my experience on the aircraft. It is entirely up to the local authority to approve the qualifications and (modestly) I think they made a good choice of approving RAF QFIs (albeit with no type experience) and me with lots of type experience, rather than insisting on a paper qualification.

Anyway, even in one JAR country that I know of (Austria) there is no requirement to have extra instructor qualifications to teach MEP or even IFR - all that is required is an FI(A) and experience requirements.

The requirements of my own authority are slightly different to LASORS, but are:


100 h de formation dans les trois ans précédant l'échéance de la qualification, dont 30 heures dans les 12 mois précédant l'échéance.


So as you can read there is no mention that I have to instruct on a type for which I hold a CRI qualification. As you suggest I suppose it is a specific case for which there is no precedent, so I will check with the authority (if I can get them to answer the phone - but that is another story...)

[Genghis the Engineer]

Actually can I chip in with a subsidiary question, if anybody knows the answer.

I'm a CRI (SEP/SPA), and have been mostly teaching SEP but (permitted by UK CAA as I have more than enough hours on class) have been doing a bit of teaching on 3-axis microlights.

No issue at present, but it might be one day - do my microlight instructing hours count towards the minimum instructional hours for revalidation of my CRI? If I teach on flexwings, does that change anything either?

(Actually let's go the whole hog, I've also been teaching on a G-reg Annex II CofA aeroplane, is EASA at some point at any risk of deciding that that didn't count towards my CRI renewal?)

G

[Trim Stab]

My view is that any cockpit instructional experience should be valid towards maintaing an instructor qualification. I suspect the authorities in their blinkered and financially coccooned little world will have a different view though...

[S-Works]

Anyway, even in one JAR country that I know of (Austria) there is no requirement to have extra instructor qualifications to teach MEP or even IFR - all that is required is an FI(A) and experience requirements.

Incorrect, I teach occasionally for an Austrian FTO and the Austrian CAA require an IRI for IR and CRI ME for ME.....

[BEagle]

I'm surprised that the francophone revalidation requirements haven't yet been reduced as they have in other natio....'Member States'. It's 50hrs in 3 years, of which 15 must be in the final year these days in the UK.

How can credit be given for 'instruction', if the authority has no knowledge as to what that 'instruction' actually was - and whether it was delivered to a standard they would deem acceptable.

Certainly when I taught ME and SE flying, because the ME flying was military I never counted it towards SE FI revalidation requirements.

[Trim Stab]

Incorrect, I teach occasionally for an Austrian FTO and the Austrian CAA require an IRI for IR and CRI ME for ME.....


Do you have an Austrian licence? It wasn't the case previously for Austrian licence holders - but maybe they have now brought it into line with other JAR countries. A shame - I thought their rule was very sensible. The FI(A) course teaches you how to instruct - once you have decent IR or MEP experience I don't understand the need for yet another qualification to teach IR and MEP. All the requirement does is exclude experienced pilots from passing on their experience.

[Whopity]

From what I understand you are a FI(A) with SE privileges. You can only re-validate that by experience gained in a Class on which you are entitled to instruct. Without a ME instructor qualification, any hours instructing in an aircraft in which you have no JAA privileges are of no use for re-validation by experience.I don't understand the need for yet another qualification to teach IR and MEPAsymmetric training comes to mind!

[Trim Stab]

Asymmetric training comes to mind!


Well I have about 1200 hours on the class, gained flying long-distance delivery flights from the factory through Africa and Asia which have included a number of abnormal situations and a genuine EFATO - do you imagine that I don't know how to instruct asymmetric training?

Or do you think a sprog with 50 hours on type but with a paper qualification is better qualified to give value to the client?

[Whopity]

I think the probability is that someone who has bee taught how to do it is safer than someone who hasn't. With your experience you should be aware of the need for appropriate safety training. If it didn't matter, it would not be an almost universal requirement.

[Trim Stab]

I have been taught how to fly asymmetric! How do you think I obtained my MEP?

[BEagle]

But you haven't been taught how to teach asymmetric operation! Neither have you demonstrated that you are even capable of delivering such training.

Incidentally, wherever is this banana republic which is content with such woeful training standards?

[Trim Stab]

Incidentally, wherever is this banana republic which is content with such woeful training standards?


pmail me and I'll give you the address of the 11000hr+ RAF A2QFI who is CFI - you can argue with him about his "woeful training standards".

[mad_jock]

BEagle alot of places outside the EU do the same thing.

If you hold a JAR license in alot of places you are taken as an elite god by the regulators and they will give out authorisations on out of date FI ratings and CRMI course certs.

To be honest the teaching bit isn't to bad. Its when they decided your good to go for C o A flight tests it gets a bit daft. The only reason why I did it was because I had done a couple of them before and I used the CAA flight test not the local one which to be quite honest was suicidal. They only accepted the paper work after I printed off the airbus crash on post maint flight test in the middle east. Later found out there had been 4 crashes doing the test program previously in twins.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I recall sitting in a crewroom in Canada last summer chatting to some local pilots. I was asked if I was an instructor and I explained that I was a CRI and what privileges that gave me.

They were quite surprised saying that most of those privileges were embedded in the Transport Canada CPL.

As you say Jock.


Air testing's another beast of course. It's a specialist task that really should not be done by somebody without specialist training, any more than flying instruction should.

At some point, somebody had to be first of course. But in the modern world, we do have plenty of both Test Pilots and Instructors (even if EASA has completely moved the goalposts for both), so it shouldn't be necessary in those two cases.

G

[mad_jock]

G the test I refused to do was with an engine shut down, stall the aircraft and break through the stick push.

And in these places there are no "trained" test pilots, just pilots that have done it a few times and survived.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Not many of them by the sound of it. What the **** is the flight test benefit in that particular manoeuvre? Written by a complete idiot with a deathwish by the sound of it.

G

[mad_jock]

Lord knows I did point out that the reason why aircraft have stick pushes was because that some aircraft types won't recover because of super stall.

As for doing it with an engine turned off......

I presume that most of the guys doing it just signed it off and didn't do what the test schedual said. I was told later in the pub that the locals don't do the inflight shutdowns. Again blank faces when I asked how they knew that the engines wound down slow enough that the fire bottles could be used.

And again the in flight shutdown by chopping the fuel and letting it wind down on the NTS was just plain daft.

[BEagle]

...the 11000hr+ RAF A2QFI who is CFI...

Well, as a mere 10000hr ex-RAF A2QFI myself, I would be quite interested to know why he is prepared to accept training being delivered by unqualified instructors. The RAF learned from that back in the 1950s....

Still, if you're not prepared to say from within which corner of the third world this organisation operates, so be it.

[Trim Stab]

I just spoke to my licensing authority and they confirmed to me that under their regulations any instructional experience counts towards revalidation of my FI(A) qualification. Their currency requirements are that candidates have recent INSTRUCTIONAL experience and the type, class, jurisdiction etc is not relevant.

Somewhat surprising considering that my authority is usually one of the most pedantic and meticulous when it comes to finding excuses to stop people flying!


Well, as a mere 10000hr ex-RAF A2QFI myself, I would be quite interested to know why he is prepared to accept training being delivered by unqualified instructors.


Well as the saying goes, you never stop learning in flying:-)

[Whopity]

under their regulations any instructional experience counts towards revalidation of my FI(A) qualification.I thought you said you held a JAA rating which is subject to JAA and now EASA regulations! The revalidation requirements are:(a) For revalidation of a FI(A) rating the
holder shall fulfill two of the following three
requirements:
(1) completed at least 100 hours of
flight instruction on aeroplanes as FI, CRI, IRI
or as examiner during the period of validity of
the rating, including at least 30 hours of flight
instruction within the 12 months preceding
the expiry date of the FI rating, 10 hours of
this 30 hours shall be instruction for an IR if
the privileges to instruct for IR are to be
revalidated; The 100 hours was reduced to 50 by long term exemption. Unless you hold a JAA CRI or IRI rating hours gained in those categories do not count regardless of what the Authority may say. Somewhere you have to find an examiner to accept it, if not you will have to send it to the relevant Authority for a Clerk to authorise it.

[Trim Stab]

I do hold a JAA Licence. But instructor qualifications were not covered by JAA regulations and were nationally awarded and regulated, then added to a JAA licence.

It used to be up to individual JAA countries to decide on the course syllabus, renewal requirements, and indeed whether qualifications from other countries were acceptable (hence in France only French-qualified FI(A)'s were accepted). The French renewal requirements are still slightly different from those that you quote.

Is there now such a thing as a JAA instructor rating?

[Whopity]

Is there now such a thing as a JAA instructor rating?No, but as of 8th April there is an EASA FI rating which is largely the same thing and it is binding in EU Law. The exact implementation date depends upon any transition periods notified by the National Authorities. The UK introduced JAA FI rules in 1999, but retained National Limitations because their software couldn't cope with the changes.