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The EIR - beginning to end

the holder of an EIR should not commence or continue a flight during which it is intended to exercise the privileges of the rating unless the appropriate weather reports or forecasts for the destination and alternate aerodrome for the period from one hour before until one hour after the planned time of arrival indicates VMC. The flight may be planned only to aerodromes for which such meteorological information is available.

This as it stands would basically make the EIR useless but for very few examples. Not surprising as there was fierce opposition to this rating even from within the pilot community but primarily from those who were and are opposed to GA IFR in general. Typical EASA bullshit, first create something useful then render it unusable by knee jerk regulations.

However, I wonder why the normal criteria for any IFR flight do not apply here. I do recall from my dispatcher days it used to be perfectly legal under JAR OPS to plan to any “closed destination” provided that one could indicate 2 alternates which were open. Is this still the case for EASA OPS? I often enough get such requests from airline pilots who have to fly to a destination with missing TAFs, they simply add one more alternate, so I can’t really see that it has changed.

In which case the limitation would be very easy to satisfy. Destination is the VFR airport, which for the lack of a suitable weather report has to be regarded as a closed destination, requiring two alternate airports with TAF which are VMC. For example: Destination Birrfeld (LSZF) which has no TAF/METAR, alternates LSZH and LSZB which are both VMC.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Another strange interpretation of the EIR rules in the same Pilot und Flugzeug article.

The author claims that once you have an EIR you can get a full IR without any further training at an ATO! The reasoning is that the theoretical knowledge is the same and that you will be credited in full (true) and that with the CB-IR rules, only 10 hours of the IR training have to be done at an ATO (also true). From this he concludes that since an EIR requires 15 hours training at an ATO, if you have the EIR then you already have the required 10 hours of ATO training, so you can do the rest with a freelance instructor or (within limits) get credit for flying solo using your EIR!

This I believe is a misreading of the relevant rules (part-FCL, appendix 6, section Aa, paragraph 6(a)). The rules lay down the requirements for a “modular IR course”. The rules say that it “shall include at least 10 hours […] at an ATO”. It is not said that this can be credited from some earlier training at an ATO.

At least this seems clear to me when reading the English and Swedish versions of part-FCL. I haven’t checked the German version and also my understanding of German may not good be enough to understand the fine nuances…

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 27 Nov 10:34
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

So, the EIR gives you a no-questions-asked passage through CAS (the biggest issue in Europe’s perverted airspace system, by far) and then you have to, ahem, “get imaginative” at the two ends.

This is the biggest thing IMHO. I see the EIR as a great tool to fly IMC in CAS (e.g. Italy). However when I mentioned this to skeptics, they retorted that I was dreaming if I thought I will go through class A in Italy or around Paris with no questions asks…

The main issue highlighted here is that there are very little weather forecasts available to the general public or aviation consumers, which include information such as cloud base and visibility.

That’s simply not true, in my opinion. The french TEMSI gives you cloud layers and visibility. There are similar charts from DWD and other weather services. GAMET is issued by many countries in europe and also contains this information, in text form.

Then there’s the US GFS forecast, which gives you the altitudes of the cloud layers for any point at any time, and there are services like GRAMET which visualize it.

Then there are services where you can get a (forecast) Skew-T or Stüve diagram.

So in my opinion we’re not suffering from too little weather information, rather the opposite…

LSZK, Switzerland

Typical EASA bullshit

As much as I’m not a fan of much EASA does, in this case the problem is not EASA, but the knee jerk interpretation of the regulation by some in the pilot community.

EASA didn’t write “TAF by a state meteorological agency”, they wrote “appropriate weather reports or forecast”, which gives a lot of flexibility. This article IMO just states that you should make sure that you’re reasonably sure that you can execute the flight as planned weather wise, and you do that by looking at appropriate weather data. What’s so wrong about this? You need to do that even for VFR flights…

Maybe your employer could think about offering “appropriate products” for EIR pilots :)

LSZK, Switzerland

@Kerwin wrote

This is the biggest thing IMHO. I see the EIR as a great tool to fly IMC in CAS (e.g. Italy). However when I mentioned this to skeptics, they retorted that I was dreaming if I thought I will go through class A in Italy or around Paris with no questions asks…

I do not see why they should ask any questions as long as you keep your nose clean. If you have filed a flight plan that takes you IFR through class A, received your IFR clearance at the VFR-IFR transition point and comply with it, to ATC you are just another IFR flight. On the other hand, if you screw up big time, that might trigger some questions.

With appropriate training, anybody able to fly by sole reference to instruments, maintain altitude and heading within tolerances and comply with and respond to ATC instructions should have no problem flying in class A.

I think the skeptics you mention have a totally distorted view of IFR and class A.

LFPT, LFPN

I think the skeptics you mention have a totally distorted view of IFR and class A.

This fits well to the airways scaremongers in most PPL training outfits in UK.

United Kingdom

The french TEMSI gives you cloud layers and visibility. There are similar charts from DWD and other weather services. GAMET is issued by many countries in europe and also contains this information, in text form.
Then there’s the US GFS forecast, which gives you the altitudes of the cloud layers for any point at any time, and there are services like GRAMET which visualize it.

All very true, and experienced pilots know all this, but the flight training apparatus knows almost nothing about any of this. Try spelling G-F-S and see how far you get.

What we got with the EIR is a set of privileges which almost nobody trains pilots for.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

What we got with the EIR is a set of privileges which almost nobody trains pilots for.

O my god. I was under the impression there will be tens of thousands going for that rating.
The objective was to close the gap to FAA system where nearly 50% of the pilot population is holding an IR.

United Kingdom

What we got with the EIR is a set of privileges which almost nobody trains pilots for.

That’s not really different to the PPL, isn’t it? The PPL gives you the priviledge to fly internationally, yet nobody trains the PPLs to do just that.

LSZK, Switzerland
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