I’ve become aware recently of a couple of truly appalling infringement events involving low time pilots that have nothing to do with the (very real) systemic issues and everything to do with PPL training and currency.
These episodes (in UK, this summer) could have happened equally in Los Angeles with the same quality of piloting. But they didn’t, they happened here. I think there is a big danger that we are becoming distracted by the minutiae of minor infringements and Gasco courses while the real issue of pilot training goes unaddressed. How many instructors are even aware of this thread, let alone have time or inclination to read it? How many encourage their solo students to use SkyDemon?
Actually this is a failing of the system.
A pilot who I have never seen before presents me a logbook with sufficient logged hours plus one hour dual signed possibly from multiple flights by multiple FI’s and even from multiple different EASA countries. I then sign them off again for another two years and quite simplify I don’t know if they are even safe.
Actually that’s not true as I know for a fact some are not save. Because on occasions they are wanted a club check out and on the very first flight after me signing them off for another two year I have then refused to let them fly solo.
I’ve also had pilots who have later admitted that the hours they presented to me are forged because a flight test is either expensive or a massive inconvenience as the nearest examiner is some distance away.
Now would this have happened in FFA land?
No. Because if a pilot doesn’t met the required the standard on their flight review then they are not signed off until they have.
So basically we have a system that doesn’t work. I know for a fact that this has been pointed out to the infringement team . However such suggestions were competed ignored either because they don’t understand GA or they are completely powerless.
So they carry on in their marry way, people carry on infringing and nothing is done to address the underlying reasons.
I’ve become aware recently of a couple of truly appalling infringement events involving low time pilots that have nothing to do with the (very real) systemic issues and everything to do with PPL training and currency.
Do you have a link, CAA report, or further details?
flybymike wrote:
Do you have a link, CAA report, or further details?
The two recent one are known to me privately. But here’s another similar episode local copy earlier this year;
Bathman wrote:
Now would this have happened in FFA land?
On that point, the strength of the BFR system is that pilots are not scrabbling to do x hours in y months, and making things up when they don’t. If your BFR expires, you simply wait until it’s practical to renew it, and do the 1hr flight + 1hr ground to get current again. Minimum bureaucracy and no incentive to tell lies.
That thread started 4 years ago but nothing has changed. There is a proposal discussed at the end of it.
The checkride requires a demo of dead reckoning, so it must be taught. The syllabus cannot be changed; it is ICAO.
Teaching GPS is 100% legitimate for the PPL but the schools mostly don’t want it because it would make the PPL more expensive, and there is no business incentive to turn out pilots who can fly A to B reliably.
Some CAA examiners want GPS banned for flying.
Many instructors want GPS banned for flying.
The CAA doesn’t want to do anything for various reasons, one of which is that forcing GPS teaching would imply specifying a specific satnav product.
FACEPALM
If it weren’t for GPS, I wouldn’t fly across Europe.
I wouldn’t have made it through this airspace without it… Nor would I bother with flying anywhere near London for that matter.
In the US, we are taught cockpit resource management, which means to use everything at our command to better fly the plane.
If that means soliciting the help of a passenger, or using something unregulated like handheld GPS systems, then we should do so.
This came up in my checkride as well. There was a 296 mounted on the yolk, and after 15 minutes of flying, the examiner reached over and turned it on.
He said, “you don’t have to have this on, because I can see you know what you’re doing, but you should use everything in your means to maintain situational awareness, so I’m turning it in for you.”
Never forgot that, and it made me a better pilot.
For instance, who in their right minds would try to fly through this without GPS? (just did this last week with the help of SD)
which means to use everything at our command to better fly the plane.
We do here as well, and always have. When I got my PPL it was VOR and ADF what instruments are concerned. Navigation is still paper map and compass, that is the basic skill, everything else is situational awareness. Amongst other things there is a planning aspect that is completely gone using SD. It does it all for you.
It seems the UK is special, but how much is fact and how much is myth?
LeSving wrote:
When I got my PPL it was VOR and ADF what instruments are concerned. Navigation is still paper map and compass, that is the basic skill, everything else is situational awareness.
In the time before GPS, I always used VOR/DME/NDB to cross-check my position on the map…
I don’t think any of this applies. Does any European CAA give you “credits” if the infringement was done while flying using traditional (WW1 navigation) methods?
The UK CAA certainly does not. You get busted exactly the same.
In the Gasco day I did (I wrote up the notes here) most claimed they used GPS. Most of the busts were the result of things like passenger distraction, complex / slow to resolve ATC issues resulting in a distraction, etc. My CAA IR examiner was there; he was busted over a flight in a jet, where ATC were slow to get back with a clearance and (IIRC) he got distracted at just the wrong moment.
The really big busts which shut down an airport are very rare – of the order of 1% of the total. Admittedly the total is artificially inflated by the CAA collecting everything they can possibly dig up; they want the numbers rising. I am sure most of those will be non GPS flights but at the same time they are likely to be one of
Very hard to remove the above pilots from the population. It’s a tiny number. Of course the radar videos are always presented at Gasco (and every NATS seminar) where everybody just groans…
