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CB-IR / CB IR / CBIR (merged)

Since Peter prompted me to join so here are a few points.

The TK is a subset of the existing question bank. EASA have promised to map the questions against the LO’s (learning objectives) within 2 months of the regulations becoming law. No one can know the time scale in detail (even EASA does not know it) Its up to the European parliament administration but we are talking months not years. The CAA have to approve the TK providers. I have raised a request to the new GA department at the CAA to fastrack this and have visited / contacted providers to encourage them to get started on the new courses. I have no direct involvement with TK, just trying to oil the wheels. My suspicion is that East Europe will be the first to offer something.

There need be no briefing material for the FAA IR conversions. The scope of the questions is as defined as it is going to be from a legal perspective. I have helped produce an examiner and candidate briefing document. This has no offical status whatsoever but in the absence of anything else it is currently the best there is. I have not released it pending the conversion route becoming law. If you believe in the tooth fairy there is still a chance that the BASA talks will come up with an even easier FAA conversion process. I will be offering FAA conversions as soon as they become law. There is no need for CAA approval.

I have an ATO course manual completed covering the new stuff. (we are approved under the old 50 hour route) The CAA will not accept the application pending the appearance of the law. There have been no changes whatsoever since the NPA. My guess is it will be next year before the whole EIR / CBM IRpackage including its own TK becomes viable

I quite agree that normally its best to do TK then flying. However I think the most immediate UK route for new people might be IMCR with a guaranteed sign off for a subsequent IR. IMCR TK content is OK but the exam is trivial so nothing is lost by going this route and you can use the IMCR to build experience. I don’t think the EIR will get much traction in the UK but it will get a big take up elsewhere.

There is only one IR. There has never been a syllabus only the Appendix 7 skill test format which is unchanged from the JAA days. There is a proposal in the pipeline for inclusion of 2D and 3 D approaches in tests and revalidations but probably two years plus for this to work through. The EIR is more or less the same test as the IR less the approaches. This will not be easy to organise since for most in the south a London TMA transit on airways will be needed.

There seems to be quite a lot of misunderstanding over this at the moment. I am happy to answer questions. I wrote most of the early drafts of the the legislation and spent months in committees going over the tedious learning objectives. I certainly understand EASA’s intentions. Quite how this will emerge after the NAA’s have got hold of it is a little less certain but I am hopeful. If one state steps out of line it is quite possile to bypass them, for example by using examiners from another state.

After Rateone’s great informative reply there isn’t much I can say

But I can find nothing in CAP804 that restricts TK and flight training to the same country which issues the licence.

I don’t recall there ever was a written “law” on this. It was just internal CAA practice.

The bottom line is that if you have say a UK issued PPL and medical (I believe those two have to be the same country now), and you do your IR flight training in say Greece, you are getting a Rating only in Greece, and the Greek IR examiner just signs a bit of paper for the UK CAA, and it is totally up to the UK CAA whether to accept that piece of paper and add that IR to your UK license. They don’t have to accept it, and you have no way to appeal it. There have been reported cases of people coming up to Gatwick with a lawyer but as usual with the GA gossip circuit no detail ever became known so god knows what the real story was.

Whereas if you did a new License in Greece (say a CPL) then the UK CAA would have no say in the matter and they would have to accept that CPL (or the CPL/IR if the HCAA also added an IR to it) as a fully valid JAR-FCL CPL. To get a Greek issued CPL you would have to “temporarily” transfer your residence and medical to Greece but I believe there is, ahem, a procedure for doing that, which I was offered in 2011

Do you think ATOs would turn away business from potential students who had passed their theory exams in another country?

I am sure the ATO won’t care (though it is not in an ATO’s interest to have its first time IR pass rate statistics degraded, which leads to the 170A “flight test” which is another story) but if the UK CAA refuses to add the resulting “foreign” IR to the UK CAA issued PPL, you have wasted your money.

I guess this will all change post-EASA but I am just saying a bit of a warning that it isn’t likely to go as fully as most think. The CAA has to make a 5% or so return on capital so they charge about £800 for the IRT. They also charge some £70 per exam, whereas (in 2011) you could have sat the 14 ATPL exams at Athens for about €5 each. On top of that, a lot of establishment people here don’t like – rightly in some cases no doubt – what they regard as substandard training in southern Europe. So they are not going to make life easy for people who want to mix and match for their convenience e.g. exams at Athens (+Easyjet, £150 return), flight training at a local UK FTO, the IR test on a holiday in Spain, or whatever. EASA is undermining the traditional revenue sources and this is a problem for all CAAs (job protection) and for the UK CAA (job protection and return on capital).

I have no idea how this will all pan out. I can’t read the EASA documents anymore (too big, too dense, too hard to find the bit you want, and too hard to even find the one that’s applicable, and then it’s too hard to be sure it’s the latest version) but there is some stuff about the UK CAA having to approve and brief a foreign examiner, which is obviously done to prevent the UK system being completely undermined.

Last Edited by Peter at 22 Feb 17:52
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I am very pleased to see Rateone on here, it is good to hear from someone really close to the process, so thank you for sharing your thoughts.
From a selfish perspective I am especially pleased to hear that the FAA conversions can proceed without delay after the law is passed. It sounds like that will be later this year.

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

Likely implementation date CB IR ?

Hello Forum,

What are the latest guesses for the Competency Based Instrument Rating (and foreign IR conversion particularly) to be made available to pilots?
In my case, I am in interested in the Belgian implementation date, but i guess everyone in Europe is curious.

Any knowledge? Educated guesses?

Thanks.

Niner Mike

PS: I like this forum.

Abeam the Flying Dream
EBKT, western Belgium, Belgium

I’ve asked a Dutch ATO (singles and twins) and they expect that they can offer the Enroute IR training June / early July 2014.

The amendments come into effect on 3 April. Personally, I can see no excuse for an NAA to refuse to permit a skill test for conversion of an ICAO IR on 4 April. Your NAA may not agree. But you might want to give them a bit of breathing space to read the AMC etc.

Yes. I immagine that many NAAs will require their IREs to complete at least some sort of “briefing” before they can do those IR conversion checkflights, because they contain the novelty of oral exams.

I guess most examiners will want to have some guidance on how they are supposed to do that.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 27 Mar 16:19
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Is the conversion intended to be done via the FTO pipeline, or with a freelance IRE (like the JAA IR revalidation is currently done)?

Bear in mind that in the UK a freelance “anybody” cannot do an initial IR test.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

In Germany, it looks like there will not not need to be any FTO involvement at all.

Im the moment it is just about finding an examiner able / willing to do it. And knowing german examimers, I guess they’ll want to know what exactly they’re supposed to do and which form to fill out.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 29 Mar 14:33
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

I wonder how the US EASA IR training establishments will factor into this? I know in the past the initial IR couldn’t be done in the USA but re-validations could.

Just thinking of the possibilities here because as someone who is very familiar with the USA system, then potentially a conversion to EASA carried out in the USA would be a trivial matter…..

EGHS
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