FOCA, the Swiss aviation authority, has sent out a clarification regarding what constitues a supervised solo flight in the sense of the requirements to lift the FI restriction as defined in FCL.910.:
Supervising a student during circuit training and, if necessary, commenting on approaches and land-
ings does not meet these requirements and does not provide the flight instructor candidate with the ex-
perience desired by the legislator.
Cross-country flights with external landings can be considered as individually supervised solo flights in
individual cases, provided that a debriefing/briefing takes place by telephone between the outbound
and return flight or the onward flight. Namely, 150 km or 270 km navigation flights during basic LAPL or
PPL training.
What do you guys think of it ? I’m sure a lot of FI included supervised circuit training as part of the 25 solos…
What is a ‘supervised solo’? Either you’re solo or you’re not.
“Supervised solo” is exactly that. The instructor is in the clubhouse watching you do your circuit, or at home watching TV as you do a cross country. Or down the pub. Depending on the instructor and student.
I humbly submit that FOCA are completely wrong, It says “has supervised 25 solo flights”. If the regulator wanted to limit this to cross country flights, they could have written this. But they wrote flights.
.
FOCA clearly has no common sense and does not understand that flying circuits involves being in flight. Even EASA did not foresee such a level of ignorance of what flying involves and does not provide a definition for it.
But it defines “flight time” as “the total time from the moment an aircraft first moves for the purpose of taking off until the moment it finally comes to rest at the end of the flight”.
Since obviously “flight time” involves a flight (otherwise it cannot be logged as such) and since the student clearly logs flight time, circuit training MUST be a flight. And since he cannot go into the air willy-nilly and must be supervised, a session of solo circuit training is a supervised solo flight (not one per circuit, but the whole session).
And there is nothing in the regs that exclude solo circuits from the exercises a FI(R) can supervise.
Also anyone who thinks supervising solo circuit training does not provide experience to the FI(R) clearly has never instructed ab initio.
I said humbly, not politely.
Move the licence to Austrocontrol ASAP.
I also think they are making it harder than necessary but it is completely on brand for FOCA. The term gold plating might as well have been invented there.
Well, Switzerland has to do something with all that gold in the vaults…
Just like the FOCA needs a pilot to pass the written boat licence exam in order to get a seaplane rating.
Is there any source for the full text? And what was the reason FOCA felt compelled to do a clarification?
Good point – what are “these requirements” that supervising circuit training does not meet? There are none in EASA part FCL which only refers to supervising “flights”.
Enclosed is the communication from the FOCA.
