Yes, VFR on top comes handy for long en-route during the summer and could give the same utility as EIR,
In winter, most aircrafts will not go VFR-on-top or inside cloud for long times, irrespective of the licence (e.g. full IR, EIR, PPL on top)
So, I guess apart from the hours gain on EIR to get a CBIR, there is not much to make from it in France/Germany neither?
Back to this one, not CPL skill test but TK, if someone medium term plan is to have a PPL/IR with an FI certificate,
Does doing separate CPL TK and CBIR TK make sense? I know, for a wanabee airliner pilot the default answer is NO and the sensible thing is to get ATPL TK just after getting PPL but for someone flying private it is rather a tricky choice, especially with the new reduced CBIR theory…
Anyone flying on PPL went for ATPL TK?
How much of ATPL TK is covred in CPL TK and CBIR TK, 70% or 25%?
Ps: I am talking about passing exam contents not the practical utility of the associated TK…I got ATPL TK books at home, it will probably take me 5 years to read them at my own peace without getting bored
Does doing separate CPL TK and CBIR TK make sense?
I think the “classic” thread on this is this one 
For the majority of the subjects, the ATPL QB is about 30% bigger than the CPL QB (I think HP&L is one of the few exceptions, and there are some exam credits IIRC) but it would be unlikely if the 13 CPL exams plus the 7 CB IR exams were less work than the 14 ATPL exams. The CB IR exams are nowadays required to contain no jet transport related questions but the CPL exams don’t have that restriction. Maybe someone who has done them recently can confirm?
Just my opinion and feedback from many people; never did this myself.
Anyone flying on PPL went for ATPL TK?
I know of a number who wanted to be airline pilots and then “life” intervened There is no value in that, except you get HPA credit for any ICAO ATPL theory pass[es]. But HPA is not a lot of work, as a 2-3 day course. And you can’t call yourself Captain until you have a real ATPL, which is probably the worst part of it 
The actual value of the theory is probably at least 90% total crap. It is a way to keep anybody less than wholly committed to The Great Cause away from airline cockpits Those were more or less the words of the UK CAA IR examiners, many years ago, when talking about the then UK IR.
Thanks Mike for the encouraging head-up and the blog
Peter wrote:
The actual value of the theory is probably at least 90% total crap.
Peter wrote:
if the 13 CPL exams plus the 7 CB IR exams were less work than the 14 ATPL exams
I guess just crack on and go for ATPL ones, it seems the whole set-up is geared toward this TK, at least you get in those exams what you have seen already in the question banks rather than wasting time on optimizing what is in/out of PPL/CBIR/CPL theory exams…
The CB IR exams are nowadays required to contain no jet transport related questions but the CPL exams don’t have that restriction.
When I was doing my 7 IR exams, the questions were chosen as random 80% questions from ATPL QB. I remember jet performance calculations and questions on cargo manifests
Yes; this is country dependent. The UK CAA weeded out those questions, 1 or 2 other CAAs did also (Germany?) and the rest left them all in. This is what you pay for – extra quality in the UK, at 10x the cost of sitting the exams compared to say Athens
Peter wrote:
Yes; this is country dependent. The UK CAA weeded out those questions, 1 or 2 other CAAs did also (Germany?)
Sweden did, too. At least in 2014.
Emir wrote:
I remember jet performance calculations and questions on cargo manifests
Peter wrote:
This is what you pay for – extra quality in the UK, at 10x the cost of sitting the exams compared to say Athens
I heard rumors that in the early batch students of the UK CBIR TK exams many have failed, then managed to re-pass after challenging CAA on questions that should not appear in the reduced CBIR exams, that de-cluttering is still going now but slowly
I heard that too. What seems to have happened is that the UK QB for the 7-exam JAA IR (later EASA IR) was weeded of the bad questions, but when the CB IR came along, this was initially not done, or was done badly due to lack of expertise in the CAA at the time.
Challenging questions happens often but is hard to do because you are not allowed to make any notes and take them out of the exam room, so there is no legit way to collect the evidence you need to challenge them! And most won’t bother challenging anything if they passed
I am also not sure if the CAA always credits duff questions; I got that in the airspace infringements “fake tutorial and exam” experience. There, the head of airspace policy (or some similar title) told me bluntly on the phone that if I got all the others right I would have passed even with the dodgy questions
The downside of the reduced CB IR QB for the “private IR” is that (a) if you later want to do the ATPL exams, you don’t get any credits, and (b) the exam passes don’t count towards the HPA theory. With the older JAA/EASA IR exams you still got no credits towards the ATPL set but you did get the HPA credits.
