Peter wrote:
So now you can totally self study, and turn up and sit the exams for something like £25 each.My younger son is doing this right now.
That’s no problem if he is good at self studying. What I don’t like is when students expect their flying instructor to explain theoretical stuff to them which they are supposed to learn either in ground school or by self study. As a flying instructor (at least around here) I get paid by flying minutes. Briefing, debriefing, walkaround, flight plan filing, taxiing, waiting at the holding point, paperwork, … is already done in my private unpaid time. If they want anything else from me they either pay my hourly rate or get it from the internet…
Peter wrote:
There was a proposal for mandatory classroom for the EASA PPL.We had a thread on it but I can’t find it.
The proposal was abandoned.
So now you can totally self study, and turn up and sit the exams for something like £25 each.
Interesting. I thought the 10 % rule applied to PPL as well. It has been there for years. I think all the ATOs I know apply it. I looked it up right now and the only hole I can see is that it talks about modular courses when it comes to distance learning. Is PPL theory a modular course? I’m not aware of any other provision for distance learning.
what_next wrote:
If they want anything else from me they either pay my hourly rate or get it from the internet…
That’s interesting – and not good. Here in the US you pay the instructor for the time he/she spends with you. While this (in my experience) doesn’t apply to walkarounds etc, it certainly applies to ground instruction. IME there’s hardly a better way of learning than discussing something before the flight, then doing it in the air and then talk about / explain it again in a post-flight debrief. That’s how I did my PPL many years ago and that’s how I do a BFR now (always try to find something new on that occasion).
172driver wrote:
While this (in my experience) doesn’t apply to walkarounds etc.
In my experience, it is from the moment where you say “Hi” until you say “bye”. Including the time when you take them to lunch on some other airfield. 
Rwy20 wrote:
In my experience, it is from the moment where you say “Hi” until you say “bye”. Including the time when you take them to lunch on some other airfield.
Not in mine, but hey, YMMV 
Rwy20 wrote:
In my experience, it is from the moment where you say “Hi” until you say “bye”. Including the time when you take them to lunch on some other airfield.
My PPL instructor was paid for every minute I was with him…. at the rate of $40 US per 24 hr period, or any fraction thereof. I must’ve bought some lunches too. I guess I also paid a bit more for some later training with another instructor that got me tuned up to take the practical exam… That included some kind of ground school but I forget the details 12 years later. Happily, the total expense to get my private certificate didn’t register greatly on my radar.
172driver wrote:
IME there’s hardly a better way of learning than discussing something before the flight, then doing it in the air and then talk about / explain it again in a post-flight debrief. That’s how I did my PPL many years ago and that’s how I do a BFR now (always try to find something new on that occasion).
I agree, and hangar talk with skilled people on a more frequent basis is good too. My biennial flight reviews are that plus a some flying, and are free of cost. Going down the mainstream, in a mindless ‘organization’ and in particular when forced to do so by anal regulatory nonsense, is IME rarely a very productive experience.
I think if I were in hypoxiacub’s position I’d keep flying with an FAA certificate plus US passport and put the burden of proof on whoever in Europe might someday care. Every minute you screw around trying to satisfy bureaucrats is another minute lost from your life.
Silvaire wrote:
I think if I were in hypoxiacub’s position I’d keep flying with an FAA certificate plus US passport and put the burden of proof on whoever in Europe might someday care. Every minute you screw around trying to satisfy bureaucrats is another minute lost from your life.
OMG! An anarchist! Call Homeland Security!
172driver wrote:
That’s interesting – and not good
I share that view. But as always YMMV.
In France and Luxembourg, PPL training is mainly done by airclubs in which instructors are either :
- paid by the club a monthly salary (and then you pay something extra on the flight hour to finance that)
- doing it as “bénévole” (sorry the word does not come to me in English) (and then you pay something extra on the flight hour to finance some of the expense they incur to come fly with you, but no salary) as they ususally have another means of income (pension, job…)
In Luxembourg the ATO/FTO part as a slightly different way of charging since a few years and I don’t know to which training it applies (IR for sure) where you log it with a ‘B’ meaning “briefing” and where you get charged a 1/2 of instructor time extra for the briefing/debriefing part.
PapaPapa wrote:
bénévole
Volunteer
