Part-NCO and its changes in your country?

Fly310 wrote:

can make his own Alternative Means of Compliance (AltMoC) without having to prove equal level of safety or anything.
Is that really what the following means?

Yes, according to the head of Air Operations Regulation at EASA. He has been asked specifically since many have doubted it. He also mentions that this is different from Part-NCC (and of course part-CAT).

… to follow up: this is from the statement from the head of OPS reg at EASA.

NCO.GEN.101 establishes the right of a NCO operator to use alternative means of compliance (altMOCs), without establishing any other conditions or obligations. This is only valid in case of NCO, as in in the case of CAT, NCC and SPO, since part-ORO applies to those types of operations, then also ORO.GEN.120 applies, which establishes different regimes for altMOCs used by CAT, NCC and SPO operators. This was also the reason that some (more prescriptive) requirements were included at IR level for NCO while for CAT/NCC/SPO are at AMC level.

Which requirements are being referred to in the last sentence I have no idea.

NCO.OP.115 gives the freedom of landing IFR without procedures, same goes for departures, if no official ones are availabble for the runway.

In Germany at least, this still doesn’t work, since we still have the (illegal) ban on IFR in class Golf airspace.

Even if you say that this ban is void, then it still won’t work in practice. Here, airfields which have no IAP are only approved for VFR use. The omnipresent Flugleiter will make a hell of a fuss if you want to take-off or land in IMC, according to some DIY IFR procedure, disregarding the published VFR procedures.

AOPA Germany probably has bigger fish to fry than that one.

I don’t see this discussed much but I heard a few things regarding life rafts.

I don’t have the exact details but I heard that the DGAC was doing ramp checks this Friday in Calvi and giving trouble to aircrafts who crossed without a raft. It is a little surprising since the raft is only listed as an AMC. Does anyone have more information ?

Would be interesting, since Calvi to Cannes or Albenga is slightly less than 100 miles over water…

What alternative means of compliance could you think of, other than a raft?

Kerwin wrote:

I heard that the DGAC was doing ramp checks this Friday in Calvi and giving trouble to aircrafts who crossed without a raft.

Is it only me or do I get the impression that the DGAC has sharpened it’s knives against GA recently? This is the 2nd such thing I read in this forum in as many days… first the “guilty until proven innocent” idea of interrogating passengers of GA planes as to their relation to the pilot, now this?

Is there a trend in France? It does not sound inviting to me at all anymore to fly there.

I think the interrogation of passengers hasn’t actually happened yet. It was just suggested that this was the way they could find out the circumstances under which a flight is conducted. We have yet to see if this will happen in reality or if they content themselves with some FUD spreading and menacing.

As to the life raft, I would really like to hear more details. Where did you hear this, @Kerwin? I just measured the standard route from STP via MERLU to LFKC. If you put points directly onto the coastline, Skydemon tells me it is 49 nm from the coast at Saint Tropez to MERLU and 51 nm between MERLU and the Corsican coastline. Which means you are never more than 50 nm away from the coast even on that route. And, as has been pointed out, NCO.IDE.A.175 says that if the flight goes beyond 50 nm or 30 min of flight from the coast, the pilot has to make a risk assessment and determine himself if he thinks a liferaft is needed. I see no way how people could get busted based on this. It might just be another internet rumour that turns out to be false (as was the case about “ramp checks” in relation to language proficiency).

So yes, I’d be really interested in the source here.