Please shed some light on IR revalidation
 

Hi,

My IR expires on 28th Feb 2014. Last year I renewed this in the simulator so this year I need to do it in the a.c, I now have an EASA license (The CAA has told me to write in but this may be quicker) . I don't want to renew my MEP because that expired in September 2013. Question : Can I just renew my ME IR SPA in the a.c? Without doing additional training to re-validate a MEP which I don't need as I'm not actively flying a multi engine a/c. I just want the IR rating valid just in case a job comes along.

Thank you,

You can, but it wouldn't take much longer to do the MEP as well, so you may as well just do both.

Thank you for your reply RTN11.

The additional cost would be 1 hour flight (£375) prior to the IR renewal apparently some new rules EASA have brought in that you must have an "assessment" if you haven't flown multi in the last year. I'm just going through Google now to see what I can find. To be honest, I don't want to add the rating on because I won't use it to my advantage so at £375 extra is not cheap.

Thanks :ok:

It might be worthwhile spending that extra £375 to renew your MEP for the year, as some jobs you apply for may require that you have an MEP, even just for the sake of having that MEP, it could 'get you through the door' to an interview. :ok:

I haven't read up thoroughly yet on these particular rule changes, but I didn't think that there was anything that actually specified what the "assessment" had to be, and certainly nothing to say that it had to be an hour in an aircraft.

A lot of these new rules are being left to the discretion of the head of training at each training organisation, so if you find somewhere with some common sense you should still be able to combine everything into one flight (assuming you're competent and don't actually require any training before the test). If you could still combine it all, it would only be an extra 10-15 mins in the aircraft, which would be well worth it to renew the MEP.