I can’t believe this. I thought I was joking when I wrote what “flight” means under EASA. This guy would be laughed out of court if there ever would be a review of this. But unfortunately there is no realistic means of defending oneself against idiots like Messrs. Steiner and Spörri who make up definitions to suit their personal tastes.
If I understand this correctly, there will be no more new FIs in Switzerland from now on.
boscomantico wrote:
If I understand this correctly, there will be no more new FIs in Switzerland from now on.Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence – but this must be the intention.
I’m confused by the phrasing of the FOCA decision. They first say that circuit flights are not “supervised flights”. Then they say that cross-country flights can be considered supervised flights. So what flights are certainly supervised flights!? If the student makes a few steep turns?
IMHO this text is confusing and unclear.
Rather than defining what can NOT be considered a supervised flight, they should give indications of what does.
It would also be interesting to find out what caused the apparent need for clarification? Did some FI’s really hand in applications after their students did 25 landings during circuit training? Obviously there must have been some discussions going on prior a CAA feeling the need to issue such a statement.
I also wonder if the formulation regarding the circuit training is not simply wrong. While it may make sense to state that not every circuit itself is considered a “flight” it does make no sense to state that supervising circuit training as a whole session nonwithstanding how many landings it includes is not.
The statement on supervised cross country flights is also very confusing stating that they “can” be considered, even though it does state the pre-conditions for that (briefings, debriefings and coaching).
What kind of special skill are you training by sitting around while your student is flying? Managing your fear of him crashing? I’ll argue that is much better trained with the first solos in the circuit than when he’s ready to land away all by himself.
It’s only a time factor, now multiplied by a factor of 1000 thanks to these jobsworths.
The only saving grace is that as you say the letter itself is not very clear – while it seems to exclude circuit training from supervised flights (“supervising students during circuit training…does not met these requrements…”), which are preparation etc and debriefing, perhaps they mean to say that INIVIDUAL circuits are not flights.
So maybe they are just poor writers.
But their entire premise is still wrong. They write that there is no definition for “flight”, so they can define it as they wish, and that this can take into account the context of supervision. This is nonsense, a flight is a flight, and since EVRY solo flight of a student has to be supervised (by an instructor, FCL.020) their attempt at their own definition in the context pf supervision is also wrong
Here in the UK, this probably means the solo flight before getting the PPL, which is done “on the FI’s license”.
Of course it means flight everywhere, as in “aircraft leaves the ground”. Otherwise a student could just hop in an aircraft and fly without anyone even knowing about it.
To be sure the context is clear, this “clarification” relates to the number of supervised solo flights with respect to FI qualification… i.e. for FI candidates.
