Autopilot Required for single pilot IFR (non commercial) (merged)?

AeroPlus wrote:

I have heard that the new EASA rules do not enforce autopilots to be present, but they do state that you cannot fly it to minima anymore

GM to NCO.OP.110 says that unless you have a “suitable autopilot, coupled” to the landing system, your RVR minima should not be lower than 800 m.

But as this is GM and not even AMC, I’m not sure what legal force it has.

have heard that the new EASA rules do not enforce autopilots to be present, but they do state that you cannot fly it to minima anymore.

There is no such thing in Part-NCO.

BTW, no European reg ever mandated an AP for private IFR. A handful of regs mandated a second pilot when no AP was present.

Examiners in the UK sometimes ask this wrt the single pilot approach ban minima of 800 metres. AeroPlus is correct you can go to typical Cat 1 of 550m with an approved autopilot: however some basic GA autopilots may be restricted on a coupled approach to 250 or 300 feet AGL, which in effect may require an RVR of more than 550m to pick up the runway environment at AP restricted DH.

The KAP 140 on the DA42 is limited to 200 feet AGL on a coupled approach with a KIAS below 130. I am not sure if this means that this type is good for 550m in commercial ops, hopefully some of the operators on the forum can confirm it is OK, even if the KAP140 is a single channel AP.

Only for complex motor powered aircraft so the answer is no.

I think that in the past some countries may have mandated an autopilot. I believe it used to be the case in France for any IFR flight over 2 hrs. Might have been also in Germany.

In Germany we either need another crew member certified for instrument radio communication, or an autopilot with altitude hold function (one axis). That’s the German Luft BO, for a/c registered in Germany.
And re EASA, we have EU OPS 1.655:
Additional equipment for single pilot operation under IFR or at night
An operator shall not conduct single pilot IFR operations unless the aeroplane is equipped with an autopilot with at least altitude hold and heading mode.

So, yes, for a single pilot IFR flight in EASAland you need an AP.

This requirement should have been stated in Part-NCO. It is not. So in EASAland you do not need an AP, according to EASA, if you are flying a non-complex airplane non-commercially. Non-complex is almost every airplane that is not a jet.

I recall mention of the German rule about this from before the time of Part-NCO and the other EASA OPS rules. I am sure EASA would say that Germany are not entitled to introduce their own OPS-rules but has to follow EASA. You could call it gold-plating, or you could see it as not keeping national regs up to date with EU regs. Or you could even suspect that Germany does not seriously acknowledge that EU regulations trump national rules.

Apart from all that, I personally feel at a serious disadvantage flying IMC/IFR without the autopilot modes that Germany claims are required.

@EuroFlyer I have tried to trace the rule you quote. It seems that EU OPS 1 was introduced in 2008 as the successor of JAR-OPS 1. It was titled
COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 859/2008
of 20 August 2008
amending Council Regulation (EEC) No 3922/91 as regards common technical requirements and
administrative procedures applicable to commercial transportation by aeroplane
and so was targeted at commercial flying.
But even this was repealed with the introduction of Regulation 965/2012 on air operations. This regulation introduced Part-CAT, Part-NCC and Part-NCO, and these are valid now in all of EASA as the latest possible opt-out was December 4th 2014.