That was reported here some months ago but apparently the CAA examiners are authorised to require them, so nothing changes.
I would be careful with the OP’s proposal if I was doing this myself, because the CAA “owns” your license (if they issued it, and your medical) and remains totally in control of what ratings (or, how the ratings were obtained) they are willing to add to that license.
There is a bit of “history” to this with say IRs done in Spain or Greece, but those were accepted subject to various boxes being ticked (exams done in the UK or Spain/Greece, all training – not just the IR test – done in the one country, the IR examiner proving he had a valid IR). I discussed this with Egnatia in Greece in 2011. If the CAA wants to exercise their power to make life hard for foreign IR examiners, the only option would be to pass the IRT and then sue them (turn up at Gatwick with a lawyer would be the first step, and reportedly that has been done in some other contexts years ago). You need to not only have the balls to do that, but also believe the battle is worth a fight. The saving on the £800 IRT fee may not be… IMHO. Not having to produce screens to fit your own plane is a different thing though!
Or perhaps a foreign examiner might allow the IRT to be done in an SR22 with no ADF or DME, for which there will be a very significant market, but that is a whole new can of worms because such a plane will manifestly not meet the CAA requirements for the IRT (Standards Doc 7A) and that has been confirmed to me a few months ago by a CAA examiner… I suspect the CAA accepted the Spanish IR passes because all the right boxes were ticked on the pass form.
I thought the UK had dropped the requirement for screens?
The UK CAA is painting itself into a corner both with respect to screens, and the £800 charge to book a £250 examiner.
Accordingly, we have been discussing an idea of bringing an IRE from another country over for a short period, maybe a week or two at a time, and filling his or her time with IR Initial Skills Tests, probably from a variety of ATOs.
If anyone is, or knows, an EASA IRE who can do Initial Skills Tests, who is or could be authorised to test in the UK, please let me know, and we can start a dialogue.
