Can perform open heart surgery, not allowed to apply bandaid!
 

I've been flying for more than.....well put it this way when I started sex was safe and flying was fun! Now I've three kids and eldest daughter who knows daddy flies planes asked if I could take her flying in a little aeroplane, well the lump in my throat was probably visible but manfully I managed to hold in the tear.

I've 15000 hours, UK ATPL, US ATP, 757 Captain, so I thought a quick phone call to the friendly people at the CAA would help. Now I know I've not flown a single piston for a while now but the requirements to revalidate ones PPL privilages are nothing short of amazing, that allied to the cost of private flying in the UK means flight simulation on the computer will have to do for now.

I fully understand that flying commercially with the autopilot in is totally different to flying around the west coast of Scotland on a nice day, but the controls still work in the same sense don't they. I naiively thought a couple of hours or so with an instructor, quick check and of you go, but it's not to be. Is anyone else out there equally bemused?:confused:

Please tell us more. What are the requirements.

Being a fATPL holder I'm hopeful that this will be my year to make it into the airlines. When that happens, should I keep my SEP & MEP current to avoid problems getting them back in the future?

Cheers

SW

Hi there,
The whole european aviation is becoming a joke when it comes to this kind of situation. Take your daughter on holidays in the US, nearest flying club will ask you for 2 or 3 circuit and off you go enjoy the day flying with your little one.
I personaly did not even bother. I had to convert my FAA into JAR license, and since I did it on a multicrew aircraft, I have no right to fly anything but multicrew/multiengine aircraft. (Flying today left seat on a 4 engine jet --almost-- BAe146 :} and 4500 hours TT)
Welcome to Europe :ugh: :ugh:

Mark M'Words

I have been keeping my PPL privileges current (called SEP in your CAA licence) not through hours flown per year, but revalidation tests with a local examiner. The flying club charges £100 hour for a two seater and we were all done in just under 60 minutes last month.

It is much cheaper to keep the min reqirements for pax flying up to date by renting in the USA (time logged abroad counts for the 3 landings etc) thus I can (on occasions) take the kids for a quick spin in the UK without breaking the bank............

I found myself in a similar situation two years ago. I bought a light aircraft and realised that I had not held an SEP Rating for 22 years. I came to the conclusion that I had forgotten a hell of a lot about little aeroplanes during that period.

I joined a local flying club and flew 5 flights (totalling 3 hrs 50 mins) before I felt back up to speed and then flew a renewal flight with an examiner (1 hour) which went very well.

I am very glad that I did it. There is a long list of experienced professional pilots like me who have ended up as statistics when going back to little aeroplanes.

I came across this problem at the field where I obtained my PPL about week after it was issued. Commercial guy comes in (not quite with your hours) and gets told no-way without jumping through hoops that were so complicated he walked away with his young son in tow.

Me on the other hand cleared to take three passengers, with sixty hours total flying time, 25 of which were P1. OK, I was not going to do take my kids, but that is not the point.

Might I suggest a visit to your local GA field and find a pilot who will be happy to let you "sit" in the rhs with your daughter behind? Probably the quickest solution.

The Wombat

JW411

Is that all you had to do?I am interested as am in same situation.

Baywatcher:

No, that was it although I also did some reading (a borrowed Trevor Thom APM 1).

It was all very straightforward and the CAA sent back the SEP rating by return of post.

It isn't that bad. We just had a 340 captain in to get his SEP renewal. 2 hours training and a 1 hour test and he was done - he hadn't flown a single for over 20 years if memory serves. At the end of the day surely worth the training so you stand a chance if the engine fails. The requirements for the SEP renewal can be found in LASORS from caa.co.uk

For a jolly while away on holidays, it's not worth the effort going through the training and test. I've done a few jollys like this and decided to skip the hassle and go along with a safety pilot. Saves a lot of time and money.

But if you are at home, then it's probably not such a big deal. A few hours + test would do the trick. Having got my CPL in a Seneca, I always find going back to fly a Warrior or C172 incredibly easy (and that includes landings – usually…) principally because everything is happening at virtually half the speed I got used to.

That's not to say I would get complacent about it, got to be vigilant after all, but you've got so much more time to be vigilant :)

I came across this problem at the field where I obtained my PPL about week after it was issued. Commercial guy comes in (not quite with your hours) and gets told no-way without jumping through hoops that were so complicated he walked away with his young son in tow.

Me on the other hand cleared to take three passengers, with sixty hours total flying time, 25 of which were P1. OK, I was not going to do take my kids, but that is not the point.

A few years ago, I flew in a spam can with a jet transport pilot who hadn't flown SEPs for a good few years and he had trouble keeping the airspeed of a SEP within +/- 10 knots on short final the first couple of times, on a bumpy gusty day.

I'm sure that in general he was a far more accurate pilot than I ever will be but currency on type is important.

Moral of the story, don''t knock the currency of your time on type.

Hi!

Lets put it the other way round: Over 2000 hours I have perfected the art of landing single engined light aircraft in gusting crosswinds that reach one half of the landing speed of the plane, have flown "YFR" in what must be about the world's most regulated airspace (apart from France...) thereby risking to lose my expensive ATPL on nearly every flight, and all this while constantly fighting against the shortcomings of forty year old hardware and electronics of the most unreliable kind ever built by humans.

But I can play a videogame as well as anybody else and I can press autopilot buttons as well as anybody else and I would even go so far and bet that I can enter a flightplan into an FMS faster than most (becáuse I practised this often enough on hand-held-GPS units that have only four keys instead of 50) - and yet they dont invite me to fly their Airbusses and Boeings :rolleyes:


But seriously: Most of my colleagues who went to the airlines have lost their SEP class ratings when JAR-FCL was introduced. Theoretically, one check ride with an examiner per year is enough to keep the SEP (VFR) rating valid (JAR-FCL 1.245). For some pilots this may be enough, but would you let _your_ child fly with someone who flies only one hour on type per year?

As an instructor, I have prepared a few very experienced airline pilots for these checkrides, and the most common problems are:

- Lack of patience: A short final in a C152 with a bit of a headwind lasts nearly as long as the complete ILS in an airliner. In attempting to speed-up things, some pilots will fly much to fast on final and have difficulty to get the aircraft down on a short runway...
- Flare too high
- Overly strict adherence to memorised operating procedures: One pilot asked me for rotation and climb speed, and when the first was reached, he called "Go:Rotate!" and tried to pull his usual 12 deegrees of pitch (in a Cessna 152) ... luckily these things are well protected against tailstrikes and the runway was long enough for another attempt ;)
- VFR flying (airspace structure!).

But of course I agree: JAR-FCL really tends to over-regulate in many areas.

Greetings, Max

Having flown thousands of hours in "heavies" - at 10 feet above the ground, I finally made my way to a C152 and was astounded as the instructor took off - at a speed which I thought unimaginable!

Very different!

I fly occasionally with a couple of commercial guys who whilst not as "out of currency" on SEPs as you, never the less manage an hour or two a year on SEPs.

I am always impressed how accomplished they are BUT there are two aspects at which they are hopeless:

PFLs and

the very last bit of the landing.

No surprises there I suppose, but a very good reason for some currency training.

Having seen a few ATPs in this situation I would suggest that one preserves their single crew IR privileges as #1 priority. That's by far the hardest thing to get back after retirement from an airline.

I know someone who got himself a single crew IR with just a checkride with his old training captain. I don't recall that he had to do anything else that was significant.

Unfortunately, accident statistics show repeatedly that one of the strongest predictors of an accident is time on type.
The physical skills set for flying light GA and heavy commercial are well known to be very different.
All that being said, I would have thought a couple of hours with an instructor would have been about right. I take it they have insisted on a flight test.....

So in 15k hours you've presumably learned a lot about airmanship, earned a great deal of money, and done more proficiency checks than most of us will ever need to.

And you've been told that you (I'm guessing) need to fly a few hours with an instructor and re-take your GFT to fly P1 in an aeroplane that is, roughly speaking, ½% of the weight of anything you've flown in the last 20 years, with reversible controls (again probably something you've not flown in a couple of decades), almost entirely in VFR - which again will be something you've done relatively little of.

This is in an environment where there's a well established track record, before the rules were changed, of high hour ATPLs bending little aeroplanes because they didn't feel they needed (re?)conversion training.

The problem is exactly what?

G

Sky Wave, FLEXPWR, ETOPS, JW411, wombat13, Baywatcher, tom775257, RogerIrrelevant69, Final 3 Greens, what next, ExSimGuy, Fuji Abound, IO540, justinmg, Genghis the Engineer - Congratulations, you have all, clearly, been HAD! The requirements for the holder of a current ATPL(A) to fly a SEP aeroplane are:

1. To pass a Licensing Proficiency Check

2. Errr.... that's it

Not exactly rocket science, is it?

Of course, there is always the chance that 'Mark M'Words' is being economical with the truth... No, surely not!

If that worries you, try requalifying in Canada after a 29 year lay off, (from all flying.)

" Currency is 5 hrs and 5 landings and then you can have the privileges of your UK licence."

" But it has been 29 years."

" Doesn't say anything about that here. 5 hrs, 5 landings it is."

Errr....BilleBob please clarify how we have all clearly been had?

My take on it: "A few hours + test would do the trick".

Unless you assume anyone with a MEP CPL doesn't need the few hours SEP training :)