tschnell wrote:
Less applicants make it in minimum hours than PPL students, as the reduction in required training and skills is not “worth” 15 hours difference IMHO.
This is highly age related. The hours you need to learn to fly equals your age (according to a now dead (by age) instructor with thousands of pilots on his belt). I think this is true, on average.If you are older then 45, then LAPL could be a waste of time and money. If you are in your 20s, it’s a good deal.
Besides, lots of younger PPL students today have thousands of hours on PC simulators, often with ATC. They lack the “physical” understanding in their bones, as well as the importance of check lists, but they certainly have no problems flying an (any) aircraft from A to B in a crowded airspace, VFR or IFR, if things works properly. Everything learned by trial and error and through online communities. It seems to me those communities have their own sets of minimum criteria. You won’t become part of certain communities if you cannot show you have “earned” it. Still, there are billions of things you simply cannot learn online. How to hand-prop for instance 
or simply how to pull an aircraft out of the hangar. Flying an aircraft, especially a SEP VFR, is a very “physical” thing, while a B-747 IFR is more of a button punching procedure thing, and much easier to simulate.
What is wrong with PPL/LAPL is it’s only theoretical and practical. The theoretical courses are a complete waste of money, using long ago outdated principles. Since when was classroom a good way of learning? since never. Classrooms are good for kids to learn how to socialize, and nothing more. It could be done much better, and faster with YouTube videos and self study exercises, alone and in groups. This is how all university courses are becoming. The practical flying is OK, but too much. What is lacking is simulator training. There you can do massive procedure training, over and over and over until every single check list and procedure is memorized. Doing this, and we could get by with 1/3 to 1/2 of the “required” flying hours, maybe less. It’s only the pure physical experience you need to learn, or rather experience and get used to.
LeSving wrote:
.If you are older then 45, then LAPL could be a waste of time and money
Well, looking at our school, the LAPL seems especially appealing to “older” students: The medical requirements (both initial and recurrent) are less stringent, and these people rarely have the ambition to move on to IR/CPL. Most of the younger students go straight for the PPL.
What is lacking is simulator training
I (kind of) agree, but to be really worthwhile, the simulator would need to be a simulator in the sense that it replicates the actual training aircraft, its panel layout, avionics etc. These just do not exist, because the cost to aquire and operate them would probably not be less than your typical SEP trainer. The FTD’s or FNPT’s used for instrument training do not help much for PPL training. According to FCL.210.A you can do 5 out of the 45 hrs for the PPL on such a device.
Then why bother with a license? A license is just one part of safety system.
Why indeed, when the UK Regulator’s formal stated position is that private GA participants should be allowed manage their personal risks, while the Regulator protects uninvolved third parties?
many laypeople actually consider a basic pilots license as someone with the equivalent of a CPL/IR
Sorry, that horse has left the stable. The UK CAA is committed in CAP 1123 to “ensure that the regulatory regime for GA sector will take a different path and be less onerous to that applied to the commercial aviation sector.”
The question is not whether new and existing private pilots should receive flight instruction, but rather the extent to which they should be obliged to do so by law.
If and when it is freed from the regulatory shackles of EASA, should the UK CAA go further to deregulate in this area?
Suggest you also read CAP1886
Thank you @MattL, that one had passed me by…
The motivation of the present Review is above all concerned with assessing the current level of risk in recreational aviation, whether this is acceptable, and whether further regulation or other measures are called for.
NOTE: not “whether further deregulation is called for”
A lot of information and opinion in there to digest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in view of its authors and their background, some of it looks a bit “result-led”.
In particular, their selection and manipulation of the data presented at Appendix F (comparing UK and US GA fatality rates) seems deliberately misleading.
Perhaps it is just as well that Mr Rapson is no longer head of the UK CAA GA unit.
In particular, their selection and manipulation of the data presented at Appendix F (comparing UK and US GA fatality rates) seems deliberately misleading.
I would tend to agree. To get a more robust statistical picture requires tracking all safety incidents and accidents. The statistic of fatality per accident is totally misleading as around 85% of SEP accidents do not result in fatalities! Perhaps regulators should require a licence in statistics before allowing regulators to publish ‘papers’.
Historically, and especially after the FAA withdrew the training requirement of Vmc demonstrations for ME in the early 1970’s (which was an abattoir in itself with hundreds of fatalities), the US with a more reliable estimate of the 100,000 hours index base, has had a safety record in GA and CAT significantly better than EASA land including UK.
The Vmc concept does also applies to SEP as well, would have saved lot of GA fatalities: there is a specific speed where one is able to fly a single engine without losing control while looking out of window for traffic or runway without bothering too much about watching his speed & bank & pitch…
Flying at 1.1×VS at 1000agl is ok in a SEP if one can fly accurately up to 5deg pitch/bank and 5kts (e.g. good visible horizon & pilot looking at ASI and aircraft nose) but it does bite when the pilot head is titled 45 deg up/left vs the pannel looking for the traffic or the runway otherwise some sort of “pilot Vmc” applies 
I currently have two “students” who are both NPPL holders. They are doing their LAPL with me. One is an instructor with 800 hours, but they still have to do the full course. Here’s an example where mandatory instruction is categorically pointless! They could have both just done a mock GST and then the real thing.
Other crossovers have been mentioned above. Myself, very competitive model flyer and did my initial group A in minimums. Then I went to rotary and was solo in 5 hours, and license in minimums. I believe in all above cases the courses were longer than needed because of non creditable prior experience.
This is a really good question.
A lot of training requirements are simply mandated by ICAO. I think 40hrs for the PPL is.
Only sub-ICAO PPLs can be done in less than that. In practice however they aren’t because – a widely known fact in the training business – most people take 40-60hrs to achieve any sort of usable standard, though one could argue that is because most of the intake is (a) drawn from the general population with no preselection and (b) most are not exactly “young”. I was 43 when I started…
So the Q, and setting aside ICAO etc etc, is whether the whole thing should be based on demonstrated competence. I think it should be because e.g. I have seen my younger son reach a good level of both operational knowledge (which actually the PPL teaches you way too little of) and a good level of flying knowledge just by going flying with me. It would be perfectly possible for a competent “mentor” to teach someone with talent most of what’s needed, right up to the skills test. But it would not work for most candidates, or indeed most mentors. And usable mentors are scarce.
Higher up, the IR, it gets more ridiculous, with the JAA/EASA IR needing 50/55hrs of “logbook stuffing”. This has been somewhat alleviated by the CB IR route which allows up to 30hrs to be done with a freelance IRI, but how many of those do you know? They are extremely rare. @Snoopy here is one…
There is resistance in the training establishment to “non structured” training and when I did mentoring I told the chaps to not tell the school (they went to to finish off) that they had been flying with me. It’s the same resistance one gets to somebody who has 500hrs sim time
There are clearly some people who are really great and could do a PPL in 10hrs TT and be good pilots.
The other problem, in the UK, is that your license would not last 5 minutes So this “10 hour super pilot” would need to be seriously sharp on the rules and navigation.
I think to a large extent the lack of a mandatory ground school is compensated by the legal requirement to place one’s bum on the seat for 45hrs. If you were doing a PPL in say 10hrs you would definitely need some classroom time. But again it could be properly focused instead of the present “90% garbage” theory material.
Up until, possibly 20 years ago, in the UK and many other countries in Europe it was not uncommon to find older folk who had never taken a driving test. Many, especially where motorbikes were concerned were self taught and others learnt to drive anything that it was possible to drive during military service. I never saw any deficiencies in their driving, in fact it was often the reverse.
However, I have often wondered how much, if any, stress an FI goes through when sending a student off on his/her first solo. And of course this could be avoided if pilots did not need mandatory training or a certain standard of performance to be reached. But how many clubs, owner pilots, insurance companies etc would be happy to let someone off the street fly their aircraft or aircraft insured by them without that person having attained some sort of common recognised standard level of experience and performance.And with no need for licences who would be the judge of that?
