Airborne_Again wrote:
Then they say that cross-country flights can be considered supervised flights. So what flights are certainly supervised flights!?
I think that either just calque from German as a way of saying they are supervised flights (can be considered = it is allowed to consider them), or the intention of that wording is to underline that a cross-country is not automatically per se a supervised flight, it depends on the details, in particular consider that the debriefing/briefing takes place by telephone, etc.
Otherwise a student could just hop in an aircraft and fly without anyone even knowing about it.
Which is exactly what I used to do after I had a student pilots license and was signed off for solo.
And this is relevant to EASA licences exactly how? FARs have a different system with a student pilot certificate and solo endorsements valid for 90 days. Also, the FARs don’t have the concept of restricted flight instructors that need to be supervised by another instructor until the restriction is removed.
Yes because FAR tries to avoid nonsensical stuff which is not a goal in EASA land.
The relevant part is this :
FCL.910.FI FI – Restricted privileges
Regulation (EU) 2020/359
(a) An FI shall have his or her privileges limited to conducting flight instruction under the supervision of an FI for the same category of aircraft nominated by the DTO or the ATO for this purpose, in the following cases:
(1) for the issue of the PPL and LAPL;
(2) in all integrated courses at PPL level, in case of aeroplanes and helicopters;
(3) for class and type ratings for single-pilot, single-engine aircraft, except for single-pilot high-performance complex aeroplanes;
(4) for the night, towing or aerobatic ratings.
(b) While conducting training under supervision, in accordance with (a), the FI shall not have the privilege to authorise student pilots to conduct first solo flights and first solo cross-country flights.
(c) The limitations in (a) and (b) shall be removed from the FI certificate when the FI has completed at least:
(1) for the FI, 100 hours of flight instruction in aeroplanes or TMGs and, in addition has supervised at least 25 student solo flights;
(2) for the FI 100 hours of flight instruction in helicopters and, in addition has supervised at least 25 student solo flight air exercises;
(3) for the FI, 15 hours or 50 take-offs of flight instruction covering the full training syllabus for the issue of a PPL(As).
And this is relevant to EASA licences exactly how?
It demonstrates that the prescriptive EASA approach to flight instruction and student solo being discussed here, and the Swiss reaction, are anal retentive nonsense. And that is the limit of my interest.
Kerwin wrote:
What do you guys think of it ? I’m sure a lot of FI included supervised circuit training as part of the 25 solos…
I think legislators continue to entangle themselves more and more in a web of meaningless words. It’s a bit like LLMs tendency to “hallucinate” due to lack of understanding of the underlying logics and principles.
Or, it could simply mean that one hour of 10 solo touch and goes, still only constitutes one single supervised solo flight in terms of FI’s experience regarding supervised solo flights. The key word is supervised solo flights. In short, a supervised solo flight is not the same as a solo flight that the student would log. A student may have a whole bunch of non supervised flights, but only a few supervised solo flights.
Either way this is plain BS, it’s the logic of an hallucinating LLM. What is being done is to mix two things together while losing focus on both. An FI should focus on the student, and nothing else. In no circumstance should the focus of the FI be to lift his own level of experience simply to get enough “supervised solo flights”. The only result of this will be token “supervising” where no supervising is needed or wanted. The main purpose of solo student flights is indeed to learn how to operate solo, without being supervised.
chflyer wrote:
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.
That is how I understand it as well. “Restricted” FI’s need to provide an account of 25 solo flights they supervised and it is all about what counts for that and what not.
So again, I wonder what prompted them to do this “clarification”. I think if we knew that, it might become clear what the actuall idea was.
Looking at the original letter, it appears that there have been instances where FI’s handed in their application for removal of the “restricted” qualification and found out that their supervised flight record did not correspond to the expectations of the FOCA. One more paragraph may well show the intent behind this:
the flight instructor candidate organises and supervises solo flights for training purposes under supervision, which consist of a
briefing including the organisation of the flight (choice of time, flight route, suitable weather, etc.), the actual flight and the debriefing.
This is regardless of the number of landings completed during such a flight!
So what they define as a “flight” in terms of what supervision means, namely a complete flight assigment including briefing, supervision, debriefing, e.t.c. The next line may actually may give another hint on the motivation of the FOCA, as they make it clear that the number of landings are not relevant in terms of an assignment but the whole assignment is to be seen as a whole.
i.e 3 leg cross country navigation flight would be considered as one qualifying flight for the FI and not 3 and they also make it clear that watching a student do 25 circuits does not qualify as 25 supervised flights.
While the latter may well be understandable, the former might mean FI candidates need considerably more “supervised” flights to achieve their release.
I think that this letter will not close the discussion but rather start a new one between the ATO’s and the FOCA until they get to an understanding on just how this is to be handled. And the FOCA might have saved itself some work if they had focussed on what actually does count in their eyes rather than what does not, i.e. give a list of examples of what they deem necessary.
LeSving wrote:
Or, it could simply mean that one hour of 10 solo touch and goes, still only constitutes one single supervised solo flight in terms of FI’s experience regarding supervised solo flights. The key word is supervised solo flights. In short, a supervised solo flight is not the same as a solo flight that the student would log. A student may have a whole bunch of non supervised flights, but only a few supervised solo flights.
That interpretation makes sense, at least.
But that circular says otherwise. Circuit flights don‘t count at all. Like this, it will take years for many FIs to get rid of the restriction.
boscomantico wrote:
But that circular says otherwise. Circuit flights don‘t count at all.
Actually it is worse, they write that even cross country flights “can” but not “will” be counted. So what actually does count, they do not specify at all, other than saying flights which
Mooney_Driver wrote:
the flight instructor candidate organises and supervises solo flights for training purposes under supervision, which consist of a briefing including the organisation of the flight (choice of time, flight route, suitable weather, etc.), the actual flight and the debriefing.
So you can’t even be sure that a cross country counts unless you can prove the above mentioned points. On the other hand, even circuit training can include all those elements, so why don’t they count as a whole?
Frankly, I think this clarification is the opposite and I am fairly sure ATO’s will be challenging this. And it’s even worse for DTO’s which have less students. Looking at this, if any student does 2-3 solos under the preconditions set out here (where the 3-leg nav flight for examle only counts as one flight) you might need to work 10-12 students before you can get rid of that restriction. An ATO might do that within a certain time, in a DTO where people maybe do 2-3 per year, it may become next to impossible.
