So, as to good reasons for keeping the IMCr -

I think it is fair to say it is an often leveled criticism that it is a corner cutting IR.

In other words if the IR sets a reasonable standard, is the standard of the IMCr to low, is the IR setting a standard for a different purpose, is the IR in respects a too high a standard, or is it simply that there can be a safe but different standard?

Thoughts on the back of a post card?

I am sorry but all I wanted was an answer on a single thread without the constant attacks on AOPA, the cross posting and the general abuse.

The self congratulation for getting a full 250 people including basil brush and penelope pitstop to sign up to a petition that is flawed.


Fudji might not have all the answers but he could have the courtesy of answering my simple question about how he plans to retain the rating. I am sure that I am not the only one wondering what licence he plans to attach this to and how. I am not clear what he is drumming up support for other than trotting out the same line time and time again between AOPA attacks.

The JAA licence is going, that leaves two options for the future, I want to understand what his pitch is going to be.

If he can answer clearly and intelligently without insults or digs then he will win himself credibility and I will back down.

Give me an answer and I will drop it.

Oh I don't know. My mate held a JAA IR briefly this summer (matter of weeks) but didn't have a JAA licence. He did the IR before the CPL, using his American licence.....

Oh come on Al, don't be daft, you know as well as I do that he may have passed the IR but without a licence he had nothing until the bit of paper was in his hand and there is no way of issuing a JAA IR with nothing to attach it to.

In fact just the same way as the IMCR will need to be attached to something in the future.

One thing I am curious about is what will happen to instrument training in the UK.

It's obvious almost nobody will do the "EASA IR" and anyway the vast majority of PPL schools cannot train the IR.

Presumably it will be possible to legally teach instrument flight but why would anybody bother if they don't get any privileges? It's like the various AOPA add-on module proposals from years ago - they fell flat because it was obvious nobody would do them in the absence of real benefits. Few PPLs train for the sake of it.

And if you can't log the lessons towards something, there is no benefit in going with an instructor. It will be just as good, in fact probably a lot better, to go up with an experienced private pilot and drill holes in clouds around some VOR etc. Lot cheaper too.

On the practical side, anybody instrument capable will still be able to fly in IMC under VFR, as people do all over the world. But, only with an OCAS departure, or only enroute. No instrument approaches in actual IMC, short of a mayday.

If all this comes about, things will get interesting...

Incidentally, Bose, the reason I did not believe the IMCR would end is because I never thought the VFR-only lobby would be able to "arrange" the committee votes to strip the LAPL of the IFR option, against EASA's express previous wishes. But they did it - a very clever move probably organised beforehand.

Thanks, IO your apology is accepted........ :O

DFC living in a dream world ?
 

DFC please tell me how in your dream world do you not think that EASA part M will make maintenance more expensive?

All the maintenance companys are having to write new company manuals for part M, this requires engineers to sit in the office pushing a pen when they should be fixing aircraft or getting a contractor in.

Both cost money and so the cost will evantualy get passed on to the customer.

Some of the new maintenance regulations are more restrictive, this will lead to extra cost (more of that later!).

The CAA is making new charges for the maintenance approvals....... more cost.

A new EASA 66 licence is required by all licenced engineers by September 2008, cost £215.

All this extra expence is before the engineering companys make one extra penny.

DFC if you are dreaming of cheap eastern european maintenance you will find that it will turn into a nightmare when your aircraft goes "tech" and has to be fixed in the UK and you find that you have taken it outside the EASA part M "controlled enviroment" or you have to pay your eastern europeans to come over to the UK to fix it to keep it inside the "controlled enviroment".

Good luck with your common market theory but I can tell you now the only winners from this are sitting in an office in Cologne.

You will do what people have been doing since the beginning of regulated aviation. Do the work and not log it.

Most parts don't have serial numbers, and those that do can have the old sticker transferred to the new part. OK, that may be really crooked but unlogged maintenance is common. I am 100.0% certain there isn't a single plane flying, from a Tiger Moth to a 747, which does not contain substantial or legally significant unlogged maintenance.

So EASA will just shoot itself in the foot by making things too tight.

Having to stick with the same maintenance company is also great for companies doing bad work, because ditching a company is usually the only thing one can do if somebody has done a bad job. After a while, you build up a small band of trusted people, and you use different ones for different jobs. That (alongside brown-nosing and dealing with airfield politics) is probably the KEY learning curve in ownership.

Apparently after a very heavy landing at Brize (something in the order of 3000fpm) which left daylight between the wing and fuselage of a Tristar inspection revealed previous repairs from another heavy landing and there was nothing in the logs about it.

IO540

The provision of instrument training is as you say a significant issue.

There are very few schools that are able to offer IR flight training. Approval is costly to obtain and in consequence the school has no alternative than to gear its operation to the commercial market. One consequence for example is that it would not be possible to offer commercial training without the school having access to at least two twin aircraft.

That is yet another reason for the poor uptake of the IR in Europe. Moreover it is even less likely to change in the UK with the demise of the IMCr which will result in many FBOs losing an important stream of income.

This is well worth a read.

http://www.easa.europa.eu/doc/Rulema...ory%20Note.pdf

Please note

The stakeholders’ position concerning this question about the future licensing is summarised as follows:
The vast majority of stakeholders highly supported the envisaged new concept for a European Pilot Licence. Most of them mentioned all types of General Aviation aircraft categories. A slight majority of stakeholders considered that the future European Private Pilot Licence should be introduced for aircraft with a MTOM up to 5700 kg. However a considerable number of stakeholders proposed to develop requirements for such a licence for “non-complex” aircrafts only up to 2000 kg MTOW.
Concerning ratings, the vast majority of stakeholders considered that all the existing types of ratings should be introduced for the future European PPL. A significant minority however proposed to create a basic licence and additional ratings for the different aircraft categories.
Concerning medical assessments, the majority of stakeholders considered that medical assessments carried out by a general practitioner accompanied by some form of self declaration would be the right solution for this new European Licence. Many of them mentioned that an approved standard of aviation medicine knowledge for the General
CRD to A- NPA 14-2006
Page 9 of 10
Practitioners must be ensured. Amongst these only a few recommended an initial check by an AME7 or AMC8 with a subsequent procedure involving general practitioners based on
self declaration. Finally a small number of stakeholders expressed their disagreement with the proposal to introduce a system based on general practitioners.28.

and

Firstly, it would appear that despite the efforts made by the Agency to address the issue of better regulation in general aviation, the members of the microlight community continue to fear overregulation by the European community and have therefore applied strong pressure during this consultation process to leave Annex II unchanged. Secondly a certain portion of aircraft manufacturers have a clear commercial interest in maintaining and extending an un-level playing field that has allowed them to gain a very large portion of the market of very small aircraft. According to Article 2 of the Basic Regulation one of the Agency’s key objectives is to prevent such situations from occurring. It is therefore impossible for the Agency to take the proposal made to extend Annex II to heavier aircraft into account. Finally, considering the divided views on a possible reduction of Annex II, the Agency will analyse, taking into account the new situation that will be created by the new regulations stemming from this activity, the opportunity for any change to Annex II.

You can have your say:

The feedback is at the end of box 3:

http://www.easa.europa.eu/home/r_crd.html

The process last time resulted in 8,500 submissions and caused the proposals to grind to a hault!

Dublin Pilot,

The difference is most certainly between IR and IMC holders.

IR holders will have completed quite a lot of graound training and testing and can not calim to be uaware of the requirements for pre-flight planning in respect of any flight which at any stage will be IFR and also of the fuel planning requirements for the various scenarios not to mention point of no return, critical point etc etc.

The IMC rating training falls far short of covering even the basics especially when you consider that a UK PPL can obtain the IMC rating in a Cherokee 140 and fly IFR in a PA34 out of Gatwick after picking up their rating at the CAA.

Does any other country want an instrument qualification where pilots trained on single enine aircraft can exercise the privileges on multi engine aircraft?

----------

A and C,

If you have to work hard to catch up with the rest of Europe then does that not say something in itself. If on the other hand eceryone else in Europe is in the same boat then why are they not putting up their prices also?

You forget that managed maintenance does not restrict one to a single provider one can have maintenance completed at several approved organisations provided that it is correctly managed and controlled.

Some countries have had full maintenance engineer licensing for decades and issued type ratings to engineers. You could not certify a PA28 if you only hels approval for Cessna 100 series. In some countries there was always a visit from the NAA inspector at C of A renewal time.

The problem with leveling the field is that one end goes up and the other goes down.......unfortunately, you seem to be on the up end but that will not stop me going to the other end for maintenance if your prices rise.

Regards,

DFC

Small point DFC...surely an IMC rating taken in a single is not valid in a twin?

Yep. It is not type specific. :hmm:

Glad you boys know all these points you're arguing about :p

:rolleyes:

DFC,

You are in your own little world.

You stated
Bookworm clearly showed that you were mistaken. Neither he nor I made any comment on the safety of operating in such a way, just pointed out that your comment was incorrect. Why you have attempted to argue that you are correct because to operate in a particular way is unsafe, or because in your view IMC holder are or are not different to IR holders I don't know. Neither Bookworm nor I are talking about that. You are talking to yourself when you talk about that!

Our comments were simply pointing out that your above statement was incorrect. Nothing more, nothing less.

dp

Then how come if you take the test in a PA34 you have to do engine out flying?

DFC
 

This is not just a British problem and we are not playing catch up, this thing is new for the whole of europe.

I expect the prices to go up across Europe, the big diference is that some european states provide the NAA free and in the UK the CAA charge for there services.

Level playing field ?................... Like hell it is!

DFC

You are correct this is an important issue. However it can easlily be clouded in emotive comment and subjective judgement.

I have asked this before.

Please can you provide us with evidence that the IMCr holder is unsafe or more accident prone. Please can you provide us with evidence that because these basics are not being covered in their training this is sufficiently significant as to result in incidents or accidents involving IMCr holders.

After all the rating has been around for a very long time. Please also take into account that the population of IMCr holders in the UK outnumbers private IR holders by a scale of at least ten and almost certainly more.

Love it, keep it up.

Any MEP renewal (PPL/IMC/IR) done in a MEP will involve some assymetric (assuming a conventional MEP ;))

However legally, which is where I think DFC is, an IMC rating doesn't have to be renewed in a MEP or even gained in a MEP. Infact the first time a MEP/IMC pilot might do an assymetric go-around (from whatever IFR minima they choose to believe) might be for real.

Assuming (for sake of argument) the "same DH for IMC and IR holders" applies, that could legally mean a MEP pilot at 250 AAL engine-out in the go-around for the first time in their life.

Untested, unpractised, untrained, legal.

Sell that to the Europeans :oh:

Do tell us the last time you did an asy approach with go around at 250?

My last IR renewal. 200ft actually.