David Learmount/LONDON
Training to be a commercial pilot under the new joint European rules is going to be harder, the training industry warns. With the first of the new courses about to start, this is not exactly what aspiring fliers were hoping, or even expecting, to hear.
Under the new European rules, however, obtaining a commercial pilot's licence requires only 155 flying hours instead of 200, and is accordingly cheaper, on the face of it, by about £3,000 ($5,000). The training industry, however, unanimously accepts that the "human product" of the redesigned course is an unknown quantity. Some are sceptical about the ability of the average student to achieve the piloting skills demanded under the new Joint Aviation Requirements - Flight Crew Licensing (JAR FCL) in the 155h minimum time. The hours may have been cut, the schools emphasise, but the skills required have not been.
Not only that, but those for whom costs are the most critical (students who are receiving no sponsorship and therefore have not been filtered by selection boards and aptitude tests) are the ones most likely to need extra hours.
The JAR FCL criteria, however, have been adopted, even though final implementation does not come until 1999. According to the training industry, JAR FCL flying standards are at least as high as the licensing requirements which they replace, so achieving them in less time is a greater challenge.
JAR FCL implementation in practice is difficult because, although all the JAR FCL flying-training test standards, knowledge requirements and licence privileges have been defined, the written-examination "question-bank" is still being compiled. In some respects the question-bank poses the greatest problems. Not only do the multi-national regulators have to reach consensus on the questions, they have to be made available to any student in any JAR country either in English or in the language of the nation where the examination takes place.
Some approved flying-training schools, however, are designing "hybrid" JAR FCL courses to be approved by their national aviation authority so that they can offer training immediately, which was the original intention of the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA). In the UK, all approved colleges are working on hybrid courses. In mainland Europe it seems to to be harder for schools to persuade their respective national authorities to approve the concept of hybrids. Lufthansa Flight Training, however, plans this year to start its first courses leading to the award of the European licence. By then, the school hopes, the question-bank will be completed. Meanwhile, Lufthansa is training students to the JAR FCL syllabus, both flying and academic, but graduates have German licences.
Among UK schools, the Bournemouth-based European College of Aviation (ECA) is in the process of having its hybrid course approved by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, and the Oxford Air Training School (OATS) has approval to start its first JAR FCL course on 17 May, when, British Airways cadets start the long haul to an air-transport pilot's licence (ATPL).
THE SAVING MOTIVE
British Aerospace Flight Training (BAeFT) marketing director Capt Chris Long says that it is the airlines which are pushing for the earliest possible conversion to the new syllabus, partly because they can see potential savings in it. Many airlines are sponsoring, or part-sponsoring, ab initio pilots, he points out.
BAeFT wants to offer its first hybrid course from April, he says, adding that no-one is quite sure how the quality of the "product" is going to compare with traditionally trained pilots. Even the CAA, which ultimately has to approve the schools' proposals for implementing a hybrid JAR FCL syllabus, is showing "a degree of uncertainty" in its deliberations, says Long.
OATS' vice-president Peter Moxham says that BA's motives for choosing the JAR FCL option were not so simplistic. It would give BA, which does not specify UK nationality in its recruitment advertising, ultra-flexible pilots who could work for any of the airlines in its European group. A BA pilot with the licence flexibility and skills could fly for the main airline, German-based Deutsche BA and French subsidiary TAT, perhaps in one duty period. Whether that would make practical rostering, industrial or cultural sense is another matter.
Meanwhile OATS, during its study of the feasibility of creating a hybrid course, has analysed the JAR FCL requirements, according to Moxham. He says that, when the "sum of the parts [for achieving the flying syllabus]" is analysed, especially with the full instrument rating (IR), the total flying time comes to more than 155h. It is, he says, closer to 170h. There is some slack, he admits, in the amount of "solo consolidation" required under the old syllabus, but the implication is that there is not enough slack.
David Hoy of Cranfield, UK-based Cabair College of Air Training, which is to start its first hybrid course in July, admits that the 155h target is a challenge, but says: "I think that soon we will be able to produce pilots to standard within 155h." Most of Cabair's students now complete the syllabus with 181h flying, and some need less time, he says. OATS' Moxham, more sceptical, says: "Do you want a machine to fly a machine, or a human being who is capable of responding to situations?"
The airlines, however, seem to have adopted "...a tacit recognition that the task of the training school is to get the student a licence", says BAeFT's Long. That truism is intended to emphasise his contention that it is after the pilot graduates with a commercial pilot's licence (CPL) and a "frozen ATPL" (all the qualifications for the ATPL, but not enough flying hours) that the airlines diverge most clearly in their training policies.
BRIDGE TRAINING
The divergence is over what "bridge training" graduate students need to turn them from licence-holders into airline pilots capable of acting as full crew-members on a jet-aircraft flightdeck. The most assiduous customers, Long says, demand about 60h of jet-simulator line-oriented flight training (LOFT) before pilots are allowed to join the airline to start type-rating courses. Most demand far less.
The JAR FCL's general flying test (GFT), the ultimate hurdle in the CPL/IR course, is still not a crew-oriented test. It requires the examinee, without assistance, to handle the aircraft and its systems, the radio-telephony and the navigation, under instrument flight rules, including some real or simulated instrument meteorological conditions. Despite the fact that airlines protest that this "one-armed paper-hanger" test is inappropriate for the airlines' crew-orientated requirements, the JAA argues that the licence privileges allow the pilot to command, under certain circumstances, public-transport aircraft with a flightcrew of one, so the GFT has to be able to confirm the pilot's capacity to do it all without help.
The JAR FCL, however, specifies that pilots must receive multi-crew co-operation training after the GFT, but before working as part of an airline crew. The main components of bridge training are cockpit resource-management training, LOFT and "jet-familiarisation". The latter is an important component even for those bound for turboprop operators, and can be undertaken in any type of multi-crew jet-aircraft flightdeck. The primary aim is to speed up a pilot's thinking and acting rate from the 160kt (300km/h) of twin-piston-engined aircraft to the 250kt-plus of jets and turboprops.
Bridge training has been highlighted for reasons other than those of FCL requirements. There seems to be a general airline acceptance that employing a just-graduated pilot with a "frozen ATPL", and hoping that a type-rating course will accomplish all the LOFT and jet familiarisation that he or she needs does not work. Extending a type-rating course is an expensive undertaking.
Moxham confirms this airline policy, explaining: "Today, the CPL/IR is a glorified private pilot's licence with qualifications. It is the bridge training which turns [the student] into an airline pilot." The ECA's marketing chief Colin Green confirms what the airlines want: "They like first-time GFT/IR passes, plus LOFT and jet familiarisation," he says.
Southampton, UK-based ATP Academy (ATPA) specialises in tailored bridging courses which can include type rating if the customer wants it. If the customer is an airline, the course can include company-standard operating procedures. ATPA chairman Capt Chris Clarke admits that a combination of JAR FCL requirements in the "multi-crew co-operation" training sector and airline realisation of its value has brought good business.
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Meanwhile, since Europe has adopted the JARFCL, its newly unified training market is much more attractive to US flying schools. OATS believes that, in due course, the USA, with its lower costs, will find irresistible ways of entering the European marketplace in a big way.
Chief instructor and head of OATS, Bruce Latton, says: "We intend to win on quality, but not on that alone. We have to be competitive. We may have to slaughter a lot of sacred cows." All OATS' flying is in the UK, but it is considering basing about half of its single-engined flying-training in the USA, Latton says.
Mike Daws, the new head of OATS' parent company, CSE Holdings, says: "We're running a business which happens to be a flying school-I see JARs as a tremendous opportunity. Oxford is well-placed to be the primary air-training school in Europe."
If Daws is right about increased competition within and beyond Europe, pilots looking to qualify under JAR FCL appear set to be able to choose good value.
Source: Flight International
