Interesting he said I couldn’t count any Safety Pilot Time towards any certificate in Europe (EASA).
You can if it was done as PIC.
Got an e-mail from the Swedish CAA telling me that I can create an IFR column in my logbook and write down my IFR time. (he said it is fully acceptable) 
Interesting he said I couldn’t count any Safety Pilot Time towards any certificate in Europe (EASA).
I don’t think that is a good course start, personally, I will just give them a contact to check any credentials (I guess they are used to airliners pilots doing IRI?), if they don’t like your logbook format or haircut, just move on to another ATO somewhere else where they will be happy with your logbook and business…
My view is that they either accept your logbook and your assurances or they don’t. If they believe that you are lying, then they should call the Police and report the alleged offence; otherwise they should accept it at face value and move on.
The only legal requirement you have is to maintain an accurate logbook and to show it when asked for, an EASA format will help you maintain that. However, you are not just transferring data you will be somehow guessing to your best what your IFR time !
What ATO asking you is rather references or credentials from your previous job which is nothing to do with your logbook keeping or CAA requirements IMHO
No idea on instructors privileges between EASA states but I come across a foreign licenced examiners (e.g. Irish FEs) in the UK who needed UK CAA authorisation for PPL skill tests and for English Proficiency signoffs, Swedish CAA may have something along those lines and lighter for FIs…
Ibra wrote:
If ABCD has time, he can fill out a new logbook in easa format where he can rightly allocate hours that he claims for his IRI but it is far more easier to maintain two different logbooks and separate additional columns
So you mean I should purchase an EASA logbook (or a logbook with european format) and write or type all the old records to the new one? Basically transferring the data to a new logbook? is this legal?
The ATO accepted me to take CRI (ME) course with them but is giving me hard time for IRI as I described. (they want proof from the company I used to work for)
Another option would be to do the CRI (ME) with them and go to UK and do the IRI with a flexible ATO, but will the Swedish CAA accept an IRI course from a flight school in UK?
Many thanks
Timothy wrote:
The whole IFR (as opposed to IMC) thing makes so little sense when you are qualifying for an IRI. Who cares if you have sat in a 747 at FL370 for ten hours at a time drinking coffee and watching a straight magenta line? Manipulating the controls in IMC is a much better determinant. Given the nonsense of the requirement, just respond with nonsense.
Even IMC time is nonsense as you could have been on autopilot all the time.
Ibra wrote:
If you have 900h they don’t care, if you just pass 800h
Sure. So how many hours do you have in there that were flown VMC but could have been IFR if that had been what was in your head? Claim 100 of them and you’re done. 
The whole IFR (as opposed to IMC) thing makes so little sense when you are qualifying for an IRI. Who cares if you have sat in a 747 at FL370 for ten hours at a time drinking coffee and watching a straight magenta line? Manipulating the controls in IMC is a much better determinant. Given the nonsense of the requirement, just respond with nonsense.
Timothy wrote:
Maybe you are just with the wrong ATO?
If you have 900h they don’t care, if you just pass 800h and you bring a logbook that they never seen before they may make your life harder
Probably, an ATO that deals with ex-RAF guys (with the whole lot of weird logbooks conventions) will be more flexible?
If ABCD has time, he can fill out a new logbook in easa format where he can rightly allocate hours that he claims for his IRI but it is far more easier to maintain two different logbooks and separate additional columns
Going back to the original point, when I did my IRI, I created a new column in my logbook for IFR and essentially estimated my IFR time.
Obviously any commercial operations were IFR (company SOPs did not allow VFR) but the difficulty arises if you operate in the UK, when you really don’t need to specify whether you are VFR or IFR.
You can take off from a farmer’s strip, fly in VMC for three hours at a height more than 1000’ above terrain or obstacles, on an appropriate level for your track when above 1000’, land at another strip, having never filed a plan or spoken to anyone on the radio and the flight rules under which you have operated are entirely in your own head.
And, of course, before the IRI, or even EASA, ever existed, you never thought to log IFR time. Why would you?
So I just went through putting in IFR time according to my guess (based on length of trip and airspace) as to whether I might have thought I was IFR at the time. When I came to add it up, it was several thousand hours, so I didn’t have to worry about the minutiae or boundary cases.
Neither my ATO nor the CAA found any issue with my approach.
Maybe you are just with the wrong ATO?
