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Confused Garmin G3X demo in French (enabling uncertified aircraft to fly IFR)

Peter wrote:

people to pretend they are VFR when they are in cloud.

Pretend, yes.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Peter wrote:

No, I mean flying in cloud on a “VFR” flight. Almost everybody does that.

That’s nothing more than an assertion of few who seem to feel better if they claim everybody does the same.

Most VFR pilots don’t fly into clouds!

The willingness to fly across Europe correlates heavily with how comfortable a given country is in the use of English. You can call it “emotional”, I suppose.

Yes, that is what I call emotional.

English is only an official language for less than 5.5 million people in the EU. German is for 105 Mio., French for 85 Mio. and even Hungarian with 9.7 mio is much more common in the EU if one feels uncomfortable speaking a foreign language…

Last Edited by Malibuflyer at 25 Sep 20:17
Germany

English is the aviation language, and the willingness or ability to use it is a big factor in how many people fly internationally. Formalised by EASA, too. When one looks at the pilots one bumps into in far away locations, they come mostly from certain countries, and few or zero come from certain other countries. Here is a post by somebody else, so nobody can beat me up for it

So if one is looking for reasons for IR acceptance (or lack of) one can start with that.

We’ve had many threads on why so few are doing the IR in Europe. It is a long list. The English expression is death by a thousand cuts. It is stuff like the general hassle of doing the IR, due to protectionism in the training system, lack of FTOs doing private pilots, etc. Against each one of these you can put the US version, and you see why the US has such a bigger takeup. Europe has changed a lot of things but it has failed to address the key reasons.

I did my JAA IR (conversion) in 2011 at a local FTO. They went bust soon after and if I now had to comply with EASA FCL I would need to spend a lot of time in a far away hotel. Most people with the money and time will not bother, and now the US route is hard due to this. It’s been a long drawn out business… and frankly I hated most of it.

And all these things superimpose. So if x % of pilots are happy to fly illegally in IMC, the customer base for an IR reduces by x. One may not like it but that is the hard truth. If say you are selling washing machines, and 23% of the housewives are happy with one of these

then your market is reduced to 77% of what it was. And if another 44% of the original people are happy to never wash their clothes, it is down a lot more.

Sadly, I reckon that if you gave say an SR22 to everybody with a PPL, and invited them all to do an IR (all expenses paid), the number of new IRs would not go up much. There is such a lot else which needs to be in place to make it sustainable.

I am flying happily around Europe – last example I wrote up – with a KLN94. How much can you pick that up on Ebay?

The sad reality is that a sizeable % of PPLs will not even work out how to configure a G3X… I used to know of an SR22 which had a group around it and most of them flew it with an Ipad running SD – because they could not work out how to load a route into the panel mounted box (G1000 or Avidyne; I can’t remember).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
I think I’m one of those pilots who is thinking about IR ,but just don’t find it useful enough to be worth the hassle. A good friend of mine just received his,and it took 2 years of dedicated work. ATPL theory in GB. 14 exams. 45 hours simulator+flying in local school. At least 20AMU. Class I medical. I own a Cherokee 140. With mogas STC. Which means I can fly it without thinking much about costs, which means I fly about 100h per year. I have thought about upgrade, but even an Arrow would almost triple the cost of flight hour for me, which just isnt realistic.So the Cherokee is probably the only plane I’m going to own, it has 1000h of engine left or about 10 years, by that time I’m close to retirement anyway .. Each summer I have taken a longer trip- last year to Prague, this year to Nordkapp, the lack of IR has never been a problem- usually there is a window during the day when you can fly VFR (or the weather is too bad to risk it in cherokee or arrow anyway – thunderstorms , icing etc). The 20k needed for IR has been put into the plane,so its quite nicely equipped for an old cherokee – 2x G5, IFR GPS, trutrak. And I can enjoy my LAPL medical. Still, if the BIR comes out, I’ll consider it again.
EETU, Estonia

It’s a lot fewer exams than 14 now, but the 20k is not far off – unless one has “connections” and can log a lot of time with a freelance IRI.

You also need a good plane. I know there are a few countries where you can fly useful IFR low down, but in general, across Europe, you need to be able to start at FL100 and then if you find some cloud you need to be able to climb above it. Probably a UL would work in France in good wx.

Make no mistake – an IR is utterly brilliant. I would have given up long before doing most of this without one. But I did the FAA route which back then was a lot more streamlined, and did it on the back of the UK IMCR.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

ivark wrote:

I think I’m one of those pilots who is thinking about IR ,but just don’t find it useful enough to be worth the hassle

Amen to that Reading it costs 20k and takes min 2 years!! It’s an absurd cost and hard work for something that simply isn’t very useful, very often, for a hobby pilot. Looking at it as a goal in itself, taking it is part of the hobby, makes some sense. But then we are not talking about usefulness anymore. BIR, whatever becomes of that, could make more sense, maybe.

I wonder why more people aren’t taking VFR night rating. It’s “cheap”, fast, and enables you to fly in the pitch black night. That is indeed useful, especially when weather stops you in the afternoon and clears up later in the evening and so on. In theory you can fly at night using only basic VFR instruments and an artificial horizon. In practice you would never do it without IFR avionics, G1000 or similar. SD would probably work just fine, but would I bet my life on it? Time will show this winter

Peter wrote:

English is the aviation language, and the willingness or ability to use it is a big factor in how many people fly internationally.

Is this really true when flying only GA at GA places and strips? English is the language for commercial aviation, not necessarily the language of GA, and certainly not for recreational GA. Even in Norway, where close to 100% speak English very well, we don’t use English at non-public fields. There is no problem speaking English at these fields, people will understand you, if you speak slow and clear, but don’t expect people speaking back to you in English. You wouldn’t understand a word of what is going on.

For all Scandinavians, German is relatively easy to learn to speak, and very easy to learn to understand (this is also true the other way). If German suddenly would become an unofficial “GA aviation standard” in let’s say Germanic language Europe and also lots of eastern countries, this wouldn’t be much of a problem. French on the other hand…

With the UK leaving the EU, I think German and French will increase in importance, especially German. Also, what will become of international travel after COVID and the environmental issues ?

Realistically, English will be the language of commercial aviation in all foreseeable future. But for recreational GA in Europe? There is already a sort of dividing line in GA within each country. Those who fly at international/commercial airports, and those who don’t. Those who don’t, have no clue about speaking “aviation English”, and no interest whatsoever to learn it. After all, most pilots simply want to fly, to have a good time, with the least amount of hassle possible, and within affordable limits. Very few want to fly for the sake of being some “Boeing light”. Commercial aviation transport is no aspiration, goal, or ideal for most GA pilots.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Recreational aviation where one is crossing borders, yes.

That is where the IR is mostly used in Europe.

You need ELP for that.

And, btw, the UK is not leaving Europe – much as some might wish It is leaving only Brussels, partly Also Switzerland and Norway are not EU either.

The IR doesn’t take 2 years, BTW. Same as the PPL doesn’t take 1 year. You need to log ~45hrs for each of these, only. You can pack those hours into a logbook in ~ 6 weeks. The reason these projects take so long – and they do – is because most of the people with enough money to do them are fitting them into the other stuff they do in their life. So indeed most people take a year to do the PPL.

That is where the FAA route scored so high: you could do all the flying with a freelance instructor, and then a checkride with a freelance examiner. So, yeah, it might have taken somebody 2 years, but he may have been flying around Europe on his business, family holidays, etc, with the instructor sitting in the RHS and very happy Or, he/she could have gone to a US school and done the whole thing in a couple of months. I did mine in 2 weeks in Arizona but I wasn’t ab initio; I already had the IMCR and could already fly any IAP.

But we don’t have that option in Europe, EASA-reg, because here the cake is a lot smaller, there are a lot fewer raisins in it, and everyone is trying to scrape a percentage off everybody else’s plate.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

A CBIR should come in at a hell of a lot less than 20k…You could probably do it for half that if you were careful.

As for it being ‘too much work’…aren’t we supposed to like flying and flying related stuff? I did all 50 hours in the air as no single engine sim was available and enjoyed it all.

EIMH, Ireland

Peter wrote:

Recreational aviation where one is crossing borders, yes.

Borders, as in country borders, has no particular significance. It’s language borders that are the main “problem” for most recreational GA pilots (although it is not really a problem). Talking (aviation) English, or not, doesn’t seem to be a factor at all, because English isn’t spoken at small GA fields. You can fly around the entire Scandinavia without speaking English. You only need to stay away from international airports. But even at those places, you wan’t be killed if you make a complete mess on the radio. The ATC will simply talk to you in some native language.

My point is that GA is divided in several groups using whatever metric you want. One division can be done using aviation English as a metric. By far the largest group is those who do not use aviation English regularly. They have no intentions or aspirations to do so either. I mean, I don’t need to speak aviation English to fly to Germany, I would be better off speaking German.

ELP is a rather new “invention”. What it has done for GA is to make the division between those who readily speak English on the radio, and those who don’t much, much higher and wider. And with that, the lingual chasm has also extended to those who fly to public/international airports and those who don’t.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

For the guy I was giving as an example- the hardest and costliest part was the ATPL theory at Bristol. He also wants FI,so he choose full ATPL theory,, but even IR theory is 7 exams and 6 sittings. The flying part was relatively fast- he flew most of the simulator hours during the first covid wave and then the 15h on plane in less than a week..

EETU, Estonia
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