Simplified IR ?
 

Lost in the mists of time, amid all the kerfuffle over the preservation of the IMC rating, there were claims that EASA/JAA/Whoeveritisthisweek were considering a proposal to reduce the amount of theory required for the "full" IR.

I seem to recall that it had got as far as EASA Workgroup 243, SubGroup 16, Working Party IIIa (not Tuesdays) and that they had filed it under JAR-OPS/EASA NPC 2564.12 Para 435 E/D 755 sub-para 34(c), 4th cabinet from the left, 2nd draw down (as amended). Or something equally simple.

Anyway, has this gone the way of the straight banana legislation, or is the game still afoot ?

The game is still afoot.

Awaiting the formation of a new working group for the next phase.

The reduced theory can be safely assumed to be years away.

However "reduced theory" means different things to different people. If you are looking at an FAA IR sized package (one book, one exam) I see no sign of that.

And right now there are bigger fish to fry in EASA.

But you never know.

Oh, I am sorry IO, if I had seen you at the meetings I would have got you a coffee. My apologies for missing you.

Bose-X: Tell me to mind my own if you will, but I'm curious to know how does one become invited to be part of the regulatory process and attend meetings etc? Genuine question...

Each of the representative bodies is invited to put people onto the various committees. There are more committees than people usually and so a call goes out to the ranks for suitably qualified people that understand the issues and are accustomed to working collaboratively with a wide variety of views.

The vast majority of this work is undertaken by volunteers usually at significant personal expense to work towards the goal of a better GA.

Don't use these forums as metric of the calibre of people working in the real world as all to often the written world is poorly interpreted.

Not to mention:

As these are anonymous forums the origins of the contributions may be opposite to what may be apparent. In fact the press may use it, or the unscrupulous, to elicit certain reactions.

Bose-X,

What about the IMC?

The man who dared to mention the IMC rating:

http://www.hmbateman.com/images/man_...nclosure_f.jpg

Thanks for your interest but I think that subject has been done to death on here.

Oh Bose you didn't bite................ :{:{
Was I that obvious, subtlety was never my strong point:}

"Reduced theory" may be one way of looking at this I would like to see the IR lite (no one say IMC within earshot of the French) have "appropriate theory" after all things like B707 fuel planning are hardly appropriate for flying a Pa28 or TB20!

This is a continuing myth. Although there is plenty of irrelevant stuff in the IR writtens, the flight planning exams for the IR alone only refer to the "SEP1" and "MEP1" aircraft types. You haven't had to do any flight planning questions related to the MRJT (Medium Range Jet Transport) generic aircraft for a number of years now.

I stand corrected but the truth of the matter is that the trainning should be relevent to flying the aircraft and not a product of a number of european states hobby horses.

The UK CAA has about 20k GA pilots and about 20k GA planes on its books, plus a few k foreign reg ones. Further into Europe, the activity is generally much lower and by the time you are in Greece it is about 1% of the UK figures. In fact if looking at IFR GA, the figures in much of Europe are very very low.

So it's no wonder that if you assemble a committee of people at European level to look at an "appropriate syllabus" for an IR, most of them are going to be airline types which have no clue about what a GA IFR pilot actually needs to know. If these people ver flew "GA" it was many years ago. If any of them fly GA today it is most likely purely VFR; few airline types fly GA IFR too.

I would like to be optimistic but this has been tried so many times in the past, yet everybody has failed totally, and the IR has got harder at every stage at which it has been reviewed. I guess this is because those trying to improve things have always been approaching it with rational arguments, but actually the key lies wholly in politics, prejudice and symbolism. And now we have symbolism on the European scale... the EU is nothing without its symbolism and this needs to be understood to make progress.

It may well improve in the next few years, or perhaps sooner, but we have had so many false horizons and IMHO anybody who actually wants to fly IFR (and can get an N-reg) would be a fool to wait for a new EASA IR to be significantly easier on the theory side. Obviously if you can't get an N-reg and need IFR then you may as well do what is on the table right now.

And if the pilot can get an N-reg, waiting for a new EASA IR is doubly pointless because if you have an FAA IR you can then exercise the conversion route which is pretty efficient.

In the UK there is the CPL written exams and there is the ATPL written exams.

How many people do the CPL writtens? - A very small fraction of those doing the ATPLs. Why? because doing the ATPLs is cheaper!

If there was separate IR writtens for SEP, MEP, High Performance/CPL/ATPL, which do you think most people would do and what the costs of doing each would be.

Based on experience, the availability of all but the High Performance/CPL/ATPL would be very limited and the cost would probably be more for the SEP level one.

Much of what is complained about regarding the IR written examinations is rubbish. One could equally argue that there should be more in the exams. I have lost track of how many pilots present them selves for the practical training with the ATPL writtens passed but who can't file an ATC flight plan.

The examinations are not that much of a problem. The theory knowledge requirements are not really different the world over. The FAA system concentrates on CONUS flight and puts the onus on the IR holder to do firther study before operating outside the CONUS - see the appropriate AC.

What really is a problem that could be addressed is the requirement for the theory and practical training for a PPL-IR to be completed at an FTO - a flight school orientated towards professional pilot training in terms of course content, student orientation and practical operations.

Giving appropriately qualified, approved and equipped RTFs the ability to provide approved theory and practical training for PPL's wishing to obtain an IR would be a big step in the right direction. That would remove many of the perceived problems and for PPL training - reduce the cost without reducing the quality.

Regards,

DFC

Actually they are. The problem is too many people who only want an IR being miss sold the ATPL course which is where all of these myths come from.

The IR exams are not difficult, there is very little in the way of irrelevant materiel in them and efforts continue to remove what is left.

If you actually take the books from the big providers and extract the REQUIRED learning from all of the manuals that they send you it all fits in an A4 binder about the same size as the FAA IR manual from Jeppesen....

There are still accessibility issues around having to take the exams at Gatwick which are being worked on along with on line testing. But as has been pointed out the biggest improvement would be to remove the requirement for FTO based training and allow it to be done at club level.

So it's more of a chicken-and-egg problem than a fundamental JAA-has-silly-requirements one, as I had understood so far?

Because there are so few people who want to obtain a PPL/IR, the education providers do not have PPL/IR courses, only CPL/IR or ATPL/IR. So the PPL/IR people buy the CPL/IR or ATPL/IR courses and decide to obtain their CPL rating in addition to the IR rating because it doesn't cost a lot extra anyway. And because of this the statistics are skewed, leading to the situation that the education providers will not provide PPL/IR training since the market is too small.

(Note: with education providers I mean both the book suppliers like Oxford and Jeppessen, and the FTOs)

Almost right - the real improvement would be to do it the FAA way, where you can choose any route from self-study to the full classroom setup or any mix. After all, it doesn't matter HOW you arrive at your knowledge and ability, as long as you pass the tests.

Agreed. I just don't see it ever happening however much effort we put into persuading them. We have been trying this for 2 years now.

Can I just get a steer on something here, is a "simplifield IR" likely to materialise sometime in the next four years or not? (I assume not).