Which IR

I am not going to disagree with all the negative views on the EIR but it is slightly less useless than might appear IF you have a high performance plane.

All my early long VFR trips ( some writeups here ) were done as VMC on top. The only VFR flying I do or have ever done below the cloud was stuff like 50-100nm local flights, and a couple of trips to southern France in 2003 which were quite problematic… 2004 and 2005 were all done totally VMC on top, with oxygen.

And there you get a big problem: ATC an CAS access. Some countries are easy, some are difficult, some impossible. Swiss would not let me go into their Class C, FL130 base. So I crossed the Alps at FL129, which was ridiculous. More trouble in Spain… With the EIR I could have left the UK using whatever means available (the IMCR makes it legal) and “down south” the wx was going to be OK otherwise I would not be going in the first place, and if it wasn’t I would do an illegal DIY letdown over the sea.

So for a small group of “cunning” VFR pilots the EIR would have been fine.

But if the theory is more or less the same, it’s pointless. And the JAA/EASA IR theory is nearly all irrelevant crap. I did a long writeup in 2011 on this here and you can see a lot of pi*ss taken out of the exam contents there.

It’s also pointless for most pilots who have come from the traditional VFR world where you fly at low level everywhere because that is all you have been taught and you can’t get your hands on a plane which can go to FL200.

The problem with the BIR is the fact that it has to be undertaken at an ATO. Straight away this makes it unexcessable to the majority of people it’s going to serve.

Well, yes, that hits the nail on the head when it comes to wondering why so many more US pilots have an IR… probably is the #1 reason out of quite a few reasons. But that is how Europe runs. Individuals are dishonest and are distrusted. Trust can be vested only in an organisation. And in the UK (don’t know about other countries) the ATO pays a nice fee to the CAA, which keeps the whole money-go-round going around nicely.

Cobalt wrote:

Where would one find the fact that France has designated their entire Class G airspace in this way?

Although there is no reference to SERA, the 2 rules discussed here are in French AIP GEN1.7, difference from ICAO, Annex II chapter 3 and 5.

Peter wrote:

(don’t try this overtly in the USA because they will bust you for not having filed an IFR flight plan)

It’s largely academic since Class E airspace drops down to 1200’ over most of the USA….

Cobalt wrote:

Guillaume wrote:
It [IFR flight in Class G without a flight plan] is illegal per SERA.FRA.4001 b)3).
Only if that airspace or the routes flown are “designated by the competent authority, to facilitate the provision of flight information, alerting and search and rescue services”

SERA.FRA means it’s a national supplement to SERA. SERA with it’s French supplement is available in French here.
As stated earlier, this difference with ICAO is also stated in english in GEN AIP (although I found that some parts of GEN AIP are not 100% up to date with SERA…)

What the EIR allows and what does make it attractive to some is the fact that it gives you access to airspace A.

Where I live and fly, the EIR would allow me to e.g. fly VFR out of one of the small airfields in Switzerland, join IFR somewhere in the Ticino and fly IFR in reasonable altituded all over the Italian airspaces which allow only scud running in VFR. Flying e.g. from Birrfeld to Corsica would become a much easier exercise then first going up to 12000 ft to cross the alps, then down to 2500 ft to cross the TMA Milano and back up again to cross the mediterranian to Corsica. Likewise dangerous routings like near Rome (where VFR is forced down to 1500 ft over the sea) could be avoided.

It will most probably not do anything to your dispatch rate but it will make flying enroute a much more relaxed and reasonable experience than airspace dodging is today.

And it can be a really neat thing for people who do primarily fly in and out of non-IFR airfields anyway but would like to profit from the Airway structure and flying IFR enroute.

Having said that, the BIR does sound like a lovely thing as well and will go even one cruicial step further.

jfw wrote:

Regarding CB-IR, I understand that this is a way to get EASA IR based on experience from a FAA or other IR. I had the impression that you could not get CB-IR ab initio. Am I wrong ? If so, what does it make sense to do CB-IR and not the full “regular” IR ?

You can get Ab-initio from CB-IR (that’s what I did). You get slightly more relevant exams (but if you want to do ATPL later I think they are not valid, but I have no intention of doing so). If you also plan to fly a Complex plane (roughly, requiring a type rating), then you’d also need to pass an extra exam. (HPA: High performance airplanes).

I think Jim explains it all pretty well on his website: http://www.rateoneaviation.com/cbm-ir/

A CB-IR is a full IR, it is just a different route of getting it. One of these routes is to convert an ICAO IR (like the FAA IR) with sufficient experience and a relatively simple process. But the “classical” route involves sitting 7 TK exams and doing 40 hours of instruction (minimum) at an ATO, which you may call “ab initio”. The “C” in the CBIR (competency based IR) is an option, but not a prerequisite. I.e., you have multiple ways to credit prior instrument flying or instruction, but you are not required to have prior experience. A forum search will get you more detail on the CB-IR and EIR.

One more remark:

Peter wrote:

But if the theory is more or less the same, it’s pointless.

The theory for the EIR and the CB-IR is not “more or less the same”, but identical. Same course, same books, same exams. So you can do the theory, get your EIR, and when you later upgrade to a CB-IR (where you can even credit some of the IR hours that you have flown since you got the EIR on the “competency” ticket), you don’t have to re-sit any exams.

I for myself decided to go for the CB-IR directly, and not do an EIR, because the difference in effort is not big, but the utility of a full IR is much higher.

I don’t think there is any downside of passing the EIR exam as you are doing the CBIR, other than cost of doing another practical exam in the middle.
Then if you keep doing some flying on your own, you have the added utility in between the EIR and CBIR practical exams.

With the CB route you get credit for prior instrument flying experience, including EIR experience. You can also do a fair portion of the flying outside of an ATO, for example with a freelance instructor.