Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Why not become an instructor?

London, United Kingdom

Very interesting, thanks! It’s the first time I hear of that (not entirely unsurprising given the amount of discussion surrounding the privileges of CRIs). I guess a call to the CAA is in order this week (I don’t have the 945 endorsement)

I know 7 FI’s without CPL TK and another who is about to start the course.

One is the CFI/HOT at a DTO which 6 aircraft and he works full time. He is also an RT and PPL FE (but can’t examine for the PPL of course)

Another guy holds an FAA CPL and he works 6 months of the year around the world crop spraying. He then does a little bit of instructing on the side when he is in the UK

Another works in ATC and does a day of instructing for fun.

Another chap is a student and working full time as an FI on his summer vacation. He does a small amount of microlight instruction and he also moonlights at a well know tiger moth experience outfit. The kids got 50 hours of Stermans!

Another guy is retired and he does about 300 hours a year all of trial flights

Another guy has a fair amount of European touring and is currently working 3 days a week purely teaching lapl’s

Then the final guy was sponsored by his local school to do the FI course where he has worked full time for the last 18 months and he is in the final throws of finishing his ATPL TK off.

Two schools local to me due to the instructctor shortage currently only train for the LAPL as at present with the airlines hiring so heavily there is no point in doing a FI course after completing the CPL/IR.

I would say the majority of the guys above bring far to instructing than the average 200 hour CPL FI PPL who has only flown PA28’s and C152’s with the furthers flight being there 300nm QXC. For havens sake some of these kids may hold an IR but they have never even flown in cloud.

I hear the real problem lies with the big integrated schools and as someone with more than 30 hours MEP and more than 800 hours IFR (all be it with 99.9% of it on autopilot) I can’t see any point in doing the CPL TK.

To me a easy starting point would be for EASA to recognise ICAO CPL TK

Very interesting, thanks! It’s the first time I hear of that (not entirely unsurprising given the amount of discussion surrounding the privileges of CRIs). I guess a call to the CAA is in order this week (I don’t have the 945 endorsement)

This is what it looks like

Good luck with the CAA. They have only just issued my IR from Aug 2018, with just 3 months’ validity left on it. It took the intervention of their chief exec to get it moving.

Previous thread here but it contains some conflicting info on this topic.

To me a easy starting point would be for EASA to recognise ICAO CPL TK

Politically, completely impossible It would amount to accepting FAA PPL, IR etc directly. The EU will never accept American pilot papers directly.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Good luck with the CAA

I agree, they never replied with and answer to my questions related to CRI privileges (asked about 8 month ago I think!)

mh wrote:

You could do an FI course in any aircraft you want. Well except the spin part, you should do that in a spin capable aircraft.

You misunderstood. The FI is expensive enough using a „cheap“ SEP. The cost would be absurd using a HPA..

always learning
LO__, Austria

Peter wrote:

Politically, completely impossible It would amount to accepting FAA PPL, IR etc directly. The EU will never accept American pilot papers directly.

The US has a lot of differences to ICAO (https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/aip_html/part1_gen_section_1.7.html). And they don’t accept EASA papers directly, so I won’t blame EASA for that.

Peter wrote:

This is what it looks like

In Germany, there is no such entry. It’s a general permission

mh
Aufwind GmbH
EKPB, Germany

LeSving wrote:

AFAIK the TK is an EASA thing exclusively (not ICAO)..

I quote from ICAO Annex 1.

2.8 Flight instructor rating appropriate to aeroplanes, airships, helicopters and powered-lifts
2.8.1 Requirements for the issue of the rating
2.8.1.1 Knowledge

The applicant shall have met the knowledge requirements for the issue of a commercial pilot licence as appropriate to the category of aircraft included in the licence.

Could be wrong of course.

You don’t say!

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Yes you need CPL TK as per ICAO but you can have a lighter CPL TK exams as the US does?

CPL TK in EASA seems rather very close to ATPL TK and less suited for private pilots IMO, tough if I have time later in my life I may do those ATPLs just for their academic value but at this time it does not bring me much pleasure compared to flying

Last Edited by Ibra at 26 May 20:04
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

It isn’t so much the US has “lighter” exams. The US has a different, more progressive, licensing structure, to suit the greater variety of operations over there.

There, a CPL is a license to do commercial work. Here, most commercial work is locked under the AOC requirement, and with “light aircraft, but remunerated, but with no paying passengers” activities like crop spraying being almost nonexistent, a CPL is virtually useless other than a step on the way to an airliner, and that is why the CPL syllabus is so big. Like the IR, traditionally, these have been made hard to keep undesirable people out of the airliner cockpit (an explanation often given in past years by old hands in the business).

Hence the ICAO requirement for a CPL or some part of it means very different things in the US and in Europe. For example, I have a US CPL; no way would I ever have got a Euro CPL.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top