Mandatory training: why?

tschnell wrote:

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

Yes, It’s the same here. The younger people also has something the older don’t: ambitions (easily “helped” along by instructors). The fact is though, of all the PPL holders in Europe, at least for 95% LAPL would be enough for every single hour of their flying. But things are changing. Only a few years ago, no one was taking LAPL. All the LAPL licenses were old PPL licenses converted due to simpler medicals. (which today is rendered almost irrelevant, since we can fly on the LAPL privileges the “second” year). Today people are taking LAPL everywhere, even though the majority are the ones old enough to resist resist the “sweet talking” of PPL by instructors and older PPL/CPL holders.

tschnell wrote:

the simulator would need to be a simulator in the sense that it replicates the actual training aircraft, its panel layout, avionics etc

I think that’s a myth. Training, at least PPL, is very much procedural today. You don’t need to train procedures, you need to know them, memorize them. This can easily be done in sims (but is not usually part of any “simming”). There is also a focus on using written check lists, a complete waste of time and focus when flying only one or two planes. Students should memorize check lists for their training aircraft, visualize them in their heads with respect to the actual cockpit, which also could be done in sims, but is also not part of any “simming” today (can also be done with a simple cardboard drawing of the cockpit). Talking to ATC – sims, and this IS part of at least X-Plane etc and works really well. Getting rid of all this, what is left is basic practical flying skills. This can also be done in PC sims, but not 100%, maybe only 50% or thereabout? With this, I think a 20 year old will be up to PPL level skills in less than 5 hours, and less than 10 hours on a more general basis.

Today, all this is done in the cockpit, and therefore we use 45h instead of 5-10. On the other hand, a good PC for flightsim costs at least €1-2k (and the sky is the limit), and it takes lots of hours just to set up all the configurations alone. In total hours, it would probably be more in the 450h range instead of 45h. It’s probably not worth the time and money if starting from scratch and PPL is the goal. Bur I am convinced that people already into flight simming could get by with 5, max 10h hours if they focus their simming towards PPL.

But then again, as I said initially, 45h is merely a week of work. It really is peanuts in the course of a lifetime. It’s also a great experience all by itself, and for most PPL pilots it’s enough flying experience in their lives. Let’s not forget about that either. Hence, early non-realistic ambitions greatly overshadow the real future course of events for the majority of PPL students. Older people know themselves a bit more, and can make more realistic choices, whether it is LAPL only or further up the ladder (but they habe to work much harder for it )

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

Suggest you also read CAP1886

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.