The basic problem is that in EASA-land a commercial license is almost useless unless you get a job for a business which has an AOC.
No intention on any jobs as a pilot. My airplane is very handy to the company I work for. I sometimes use it on a cost-sharing basis, alone or with one or two passengers. However, I think the company owners and maybe also the employees would feel more comfortable if I had a CPL. It would make the arrangement more "substantial" in their eyes although it is not in any way a commercial operation.
If you don't own a twin, it's going to cost you quite a lot of money to keep a ME CPL/IR valid.
I do own one, so keeping my papers as of today is the check with an examiner once a year. Question: Will it be more tests to maintain a CPL-MEP-IR than a PPL-MEP-IR?
Is the insurance really lower for having a CPL instead of a PPL?
When I quoted insurance (on a PA28) back in 2005 it was. The offered me a discount for 200 hours as PIC and another one for CPL (which I did not have). Have not checked reacently.
By waiting a bit, both the exams should be simpler and probably the flying requirements for the IR as well.
I have checked with the Norwegian CAA and the new proposal will be out on a hearing some time in 2014, and like you point out, who knows when training will be available.
When I bought my airplane the plan was to bring over to the N-reg. However, then came the little trick from EASA which among other things made my FAA IR-training useless over night. At this point I don't care to wait any longer. I'll just do whatever they require and get it over with.
The course is basically the same stuff as what the ATPL students do, but they took out 7 subjects...
Be careful there.
If you are sitting the UK CAA exams, the 7 PPL/IR exams are reduced from the ATPL IR syllabus. You should check that the QB you use reflects this, otherwise you will be learning a lot of stuff which will not be in the exams.
I spent some time checking this with firms like Peters Software and they didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about. I think the European IR QB databases are just the full "ATPL IR" exam syllabus.
No problem if you like learning, but it's perhaps 30% more work, for nothing, because IMHO nearly all the content is irrelevant to flying.
The best ground school for a PPL/IR is CATS at Cranfield.
Will it be more tests to maintain a CPL-MEP-IR than a PPL-MEP-IR?
The IR needs revalidation every year anyway, and you would do the CPL at the same time. So it's probably no different to a PPL/IR which also needs a flight every year (due to the IR).
When I bought my airplane the plan was to bring over to the N-reg. However, then came the little trick from EASA which among other things made my FAA IR-training useless over night
With N-reg you get a superior system for aircraft maintenance. You can choose good freelance engineers to work with. With EASA Part M, you are stuck to using a "company" and most companies are no good. Look here (under Installer Performance) - this is one of UK's best known and "most respected" maintenance companies, with every approval imaginable. Would you take your plane there for an Annual? I would not take a scooter there.
The cost of being N-reg is basically the FAA trust (say €500/year) and having to fly a BFR every 2 years with an FAA CFI/CFII instructor.
Instructing used to need it but I believe that is changing and simple PPL instructing will just require the 14 ATPL exam passes (actually the 9 CPL exam passes will do for VFR stuff).
It's already defined that way - I don't have time to search it in JAR FCL but it's something like "ability to prove acquired knowledge at CPL level" which in other words mean passing ATPL exams - that's what I was told in our agency.
Will it be more tests to maintain a CPL-MEP-IR than a PPL-MEP-IR?
AFAIK maintaining requires only practical skill test and the difference addresses one-engine-out issues.
There's no difference between maintaining a PPL and maintaining a CPL; the rules are identical.
G
Just a little note on question banks from recent experience. The CAA are now very wise to the question bank hammering and have been 'playing' with some of the ATPL exams of late (suspect the same will be true of the CPL and IR ones). They will take question bank questions, adjust some figures/facts and leave the question bank answer in as one of the incorrect answers. I am reliably informed that passing scores have reduced and examination fails have increased of late. There are also papers that now have more questions but less time.
Unfortunately the wording of questions is quite often poor or even inaccurate, which is why it became so important to know the answer the examiner wanted as opposed to what might be be factually correct. I sat an exam recently where there was a question on the applicability of EU OPS and the answers all related to JAA! A 'find and replace' where no one had looked at the output paper me thinks.
Yes; one should never try to learn the answer order e.g. "the right answer is (b)". That has IME never worked, in JAA or FAA.
The real benefit of the QB is to learn the subject but learn only the required bits of it.
The "establishment" has a problem: the syllabus is say "X" wide, but the exam can contain only say 40 questions, so only say 15% of X can be examined.
The QB allows you to concentrate on that 15%.
Obviously they don't like that, but they can't stop it (at the moment).
By hammering the QB you do learn that 15%. No question about it. It's not really cheating, IMHO.
The UK CAA actual exam questions contained almost none of the "garbage" so I think somebody in the UK CAA has removed those questions. I used the fairly "OK" flyingexam.com (a business associated with GTS, which was not my best choice) QB which contained loads of "multiple correct answers" cases but the actual exams had none of those.
That's why you pay £70 per exam - for a superior quality customer experience (Steve Jobs (TM)) 
If you want cheap exams, you can (last time I checked) sit all 14 exams at say Athens, Greece, for some very low price like 5-10 € each. But then (a) you get the full original JAA CQB garbage and (b) have to do all flight training in Greece because nobody else will accept the exam passes.
You, being a pilot already, have a massive advantage over all the other FTO students, because you already know practically everything that is relevant, whereas the standard candidate sitting the exams could not tell a magneto from a magnet. So they have to work really hard. They study in groups back at the hotel, helping and motivating each other. Cheating is also widespread, especially among certain nationalities. One student I heard about wrote the entire IR QB on the back of his Jepp airway chart.
Just talked with Bristol GS. They offer the full ATPL only. I asked if I could buy the full ATPL course but only sit the IR exam but they said that's not possible.
EDIT: Also got that confirmed now via e-mail from the flight school that cooperates with Bristol .
CATS looks good. How can I remove a post (i double posted)?
Emailed my school to ask whether Bristol GS stopped the IR theory. They still offer it on their website...
That's why you pay £70 per exam
If you think that is much: In The Netherlands they just raised the exam fee to 144EUR per exam...
If you are sitting the UK CAA exams, the 7 PPL/IR exams are reduced from the ATPL IR syllabus. You should check that the QB you use reflects this, otherwise you will be learning a lot of stuff which will not be in the exams.
The QB I use is indeed reflecting it. But the course material is not. For example: VFR flight planning is included, but it is not in the IR syllabus. Same for Mach number calculation, Fuel planning, FMS systems, etc.
