THE UK'S OLDEST flying-training school is to close. Air Service Training (AST) blames not the now-ended airline recession, but its own regulator for allowing overseas schools with lower costs to train ab initio pilots for the full UK commercial pilot's licence, and its Government for giving UK students tax incentives to use them. The regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, says that its hands are tied; the Government says that it is allowing international competition to flourish. The CAA is economical in its interpretation of its powers; the Government reckless with its dogma.
The CAA has been willing before to stand out against easy options. It could just as easily, were it minded, adopt an equally nationalistic (and principled) stand on flying training. Pilots being trained entirely in the USA (or anywhere else) are not flying in a representative UK environment, even if their instructors and syllabus are CAA-approved. In the open skies of the USA there is not the congestion that there is in the UK; some areas of the USA might be subject to outbursts of violent weather, but few are subject to the grey, low-cloudbase, characteristic of the UK's average day. Cultural differences make air-traffic-control instructions in Florida sound very different from those in Perthshire.
With such differences, a national authority minded to do so should be able to find any number of safety-based justifications for not allowing candidates for its national licences to get 100% of their licence training outside its borders. Lack of a safety justification, however, is what the CAA says its hands are tied by. The question simply does not arise in the USA - or anywhere else: you want a US licence, says the US Federal Aviation Administration, you train in the USA; if you want to convert, you do it in the USA.
This attitude is clear in the European Union (EU) draft Joint Aviation Regulations (JARs) on flightcrew licensing (FCL). Pilots wanting European licences will have to train in establishments with their headquarters and main operating base in an EU state. Some may applaud this traditional stand; those who believe that aviation is a truly international business would back the UK's line. Aviation is an industry which could claim to be uniquely dedicated to the international harmonisation of standards in all areas, including that of FCL. Yet the second most important economic area in world aviation is setting out to ring-fence its employment market.
The UK CAA's error is that it has made too-rapid progress in an area of internationalisation for which the rest of the world is not ready. The UK has also apparently lost sight of the fact that it has not altered any of its UK licence requirements with a mind to internationalise them. UK-licensed foreign schools are still required to train to a UK, not an international, syllabus. So the UK clearly does not have any purist globalising motivation for its FCL policies. The CAA argues that its only mandate is to regulate for pilot competency in a UK syllabus; and the Government's argument is only about free competition and low training-cost for aspiring UK pilot-licence holders. Where are the international harmonisation components in those arguments?
Despite its disadvantages of cost, congestion, and cumulo-nimbus, the UK pilot-training industry has performed well in a world marketplace. Many of the students come from non-UK airlines interested in quality, despite cost. This vital part of the UK aviation industry can only continue to contribute to the total, if the UK "approved" schools can survive.
The UK is not wrong to allow internationalism in pilot training. It is simply wrong to allow it without reciprocation. The chances of the US FAA allowing AST or any of its brethren to offer US licences - especially with US tax concessions to help students with the costs - are remote. Until the ground has been prepared for FCL internationalism, the CAA and the UK Government should retreat, and try to preserve at least a little of the UK industry.."
Source: Flight International
