what_next wrote:
The number of private pilots actually flying IFR has been on the decline since decades, not because the instrument rating is time-consuming and expensive to get, but because IFR capable aircraft are ridiculously expensive to operate. 300+ Euros for an hour in an IFR equipped Pa28 or C172 is totally out of this world.
Are these airplanes gold plated or what? That is what I pay for a SR22 or even DA42! Com’on!
Firstly, a freelancer IRI should have insurance. After all, he is charging some 50 quid an hour… In the UK, the one I used for my IR reval (an IRR/CRE) was paying £6000/year to the CAA for his various authorisations!
Secondly, in my comment I meant the FTO should not push everybody through packing their logbook with 55hrs regardless of how good they are, which is the old JAA MEIR route, assisted by the UK CAA “170A” scam pre-test test which extracts another £1000 from the punter. The CB IR route reduces the minimum hours, for candidates who are good.
Yes, I know not many are good enough (especially young ATPL candidates with no experience) but one of the reasons for the historical poor takeup of the JAA IR by private pilots (which the CB IR does start to address, to some degree) is the huge amount of resentment at what is seen as the “FTO ripoff” business, requiring one to sit on one’s bottom for 55hrs at a few hundred quid an hour.
The need for most cadidates to stay in a hotel (usually this will be some really crappy hotel or B&B) just makes the whole experience even less nice. Every private pilot who has had to do this really hated that aspect of it, especially as everybody who has the money to actually fly afterwards does have a “life” of some sort.
Peter wrote:
Firstly, a freelancer IRI should have insurance.
Why, if the FTO covers that for me and most of the instruction can only be done within an FTO anyway?
Peter wrote:
After all, he is charging some 50 quid an hour…
I think I have to move to the UK before they close their borders to EU citizens… Around here, a PPL instructor gets paid something between our minimum wages (8,50Euros) and 20 Euros per flying hour. Flight planning, briefing, debriefing, checking and fueling the aircraft, waiting at the holding point and everything else is not paid. Not even the parking fee at the airport. When he goes home in the evening and he has made more than 5 Euros per hour he has had a happy day. How can he possibly pay liability insurance from that? An IR instructor gets a little more, but 50 Pounds / 60 Euros? No way.
Peter wrote:
… is the huge amount of resentment at what is seen as the “FTO ripoff” business, requiring one to sit on one’s bottom for 55hrs at a few hundred quid an hour.
Every good FTO has a proper procedures trainer on which one can do half his IR training. Providing better training quality at 1/2 the hourly cost of a real aircraft.
Peter wrote:
The need for most cadidates to stay in a hotel…
Not here. I think no place in Germany is more than one hour drive away from an instrument flying school. Small country, densely populated…
what_next wrote:
“Flight time under supervision” only has two legal meanings: During instruction it is called “PICUS” (pilot in command under supervision) and can be applied to less that 20 hours of an integrated or modular training program. After gaining one’s license and flying with a commercial operator, “supervision” is regulated by the operator’s approved OM-D. Other than that, “supervision” is not defined anywhere in aviation.
There is another use of supervision. When doing a type rating (possibly also a class rating), you might be required to do a certain number of hours under supervision (supervised operating experience) before being “unleashed”. 
How much should depend on your experience. For example, on a Phenom it’s IIRC 50 hours SOE for 500+ hour applicant, 25 hours for 1000+ hour applicant and 0 if it’s not his first jet TR.
Martin wrote:
There is another use of supervision.
This is an insurance requirement for private operation of high performance aircraft. But I would not know of any legal requirement for that. Or a minimum qualification of the supervising pilot (who doesn’t need to be a flying instructor or CRI).
mh wrote:
The AMC explicitly speaks of “flight time under supervision” and not as time acted as PICUS, a term defined in FCL.010 and used separately in AMC1 FCL.050. So it is intended to have a distinction between a PICUS and a licence holder flying under supervision.
Well, the actual logging is regulated by NAA. AMC is just a soft law, you don’t have to follow it. And the hard law (the actual air-crew regulation) gives NAA the right to specify how you log flight time.
I think, WN, the rates you mention do apply to non career PPL instructors (I have seen £10/day retainers, plus £10/hr for flying) but not to people in the IR business.
The biggest problem freelancers have, as taxi drivers, is getting the % duty cycle high enough And now with the EASA FCL anti N-reg stuff on the back burner, very few N-reg people will be doing that stuff until the Brexit situation is clarified one way or the other. And the an initio EASA IR private pilot numbers have always been tiny – of the order of 10-20 a year for the UK.
The sim rate is £200+/hr because you pay for the IRI also. Sure, a twin is even more.
Also a 1hr drive to an FTO will knacker the candidate for the day… Also bear in mind that only some FTOs will train in customer aircraft, so a hotel stay is even more likely there.
But this is well off topic because a CRI cannot do any of this anyway.
what_next wrote:
This is an insurance requirement for private operation of high performance aircraft. But I would not know of any legal requirement for that. Or a minimum qualification of the supervising pilot (who doesn’t need to be a flying instructor or CRI).
This is not insurance. That bit I posted is from Phenom’s OEB report. EASA material. IIRC it was a recommendation under JAA for HPA ratings, but JAA couldn’t enforce it unlike EASA. I guess it’s still coming. Right now, NAAs don’t have to follow OEB reports (and in the meantime EASA changed its mind and pulled most of them switching to OSD which you have to request from the manufacturer). Soon, however, all training will have to conform to OEB/ OSD AFAIK.
E.g. right now, you can get TBM SET class rating with 200 total and 70 hours PIC, which is the minimum for a SET rating per aircrew regulation. And there are providers that will do it. But Socata wants 500 hours PIC and the OEB report states as much and that’s how it’ll be.
PS: That OEB report actually says the supervisor has to be CRI (I guess at least, i.e. higher qualification doesn’t disqualify you) IIRC.
For what it’s worth having just finished my CB-IR. It has taken me not far from 18 months to complete. With an instructor that was out 2 months because of an injury (we ski where I live :-) ) and the flight school unable to find another IRI in those 2 months. Those 18 months include studying for the 7 exams – doing the ground school, flying 25 hours of procedure time on a simulator as well as 45 hours of actual IFR. People may think this is too much, I have (today) 276 hours of total flying time, including all of this training and doing my PPL and felt I needed more than is required by law to feel comfortable flying IFR. I am now very comfortable flying IFR single pilot and without autopilot if I have to fly any procedure or hold or whatever some ATC is trying to throw at me. When I passed my test, the DGAC tester said he had seen worse performances from airline pilots on their retest.
I have like many people here no interest in ever exploring an ATP career or do a CPL – all I want is to be able to fly my plane safely around 90% of the time which I feel the CB-IR gives me. Of course I can fly commercially, and yes it might be cheaper but where is the fun in that. I think overall my CB-IR cost me somewhere around the 30K€ mark, admittedly a lot of money but when you have no experience like I have and still want to be pretty sure to come back in one piece and on time from the weekend trips I do with the family and friends in the Comanche (to be clear if there is a change I won’t be able to come back safely I don’t go or fly somewhere else) I felt it was needed. I feel a safer and more complete pilot for it, naive maybe but flying IFR definitely makes you more precise in how you fly.
Wim
edit : I live close to Geneva and my drive to LFHS Grenoble where I did all my flying and the test is 1.30 minutes (2 hours for most people I would say) which means this has taken up pretty much all of my weekends in the past year and a half which is indeed stressful.
Instructor liability insurance is available in the UK via AOPA, around GBP250 for GBP1 million third party cover.
