Zeitschrift 4Rotors - epaper

Mit diesem Editorial leitet der/die Herausgeber/in oder die Chefredaktion der Zeitschrift 4Rotors - epaper die aktuelle Ausgabe 2/2018 ein. Hier erfahren Sie, welche Artikel besonders lesenswert sind oder woher die Anregungen dazu kamen.

SIMPLER AND BETTER RULES FOR PILOT TRAINING

It really gave a true indication of current perception, based upon thousands of comments from the General Aviation sector, that the existing rules in Regulation (EU) No. 1178/2011 (the aircrew regulation), which focus on flight training, make no differentiation between a pilot who fl ies commercially in the offshore or air rescue business, and a private pilot, who just loves fl ying a helicopter in his or her spare time.

For the training facilities this meant a huge cost implication: The way lessons are taught in class, the style of fl ight training, the documentation processes and on top of that, the hurdles to becoming a training facility in the fi rst place; has made (since 2015) getting a private pilot license for helicopters extremely bureaucratic. EASA then realised that the rules mentioned above are too burdensome for the non-commercial part of our sector. There is now a difference, since April, between an ATO and a DTO. So what does this mean? The ATO remains the "Accepted Training Organisation" with all the known certifi cation processes for training commercial pilots. The DTO instead, is just a "Declared Training Organisation", which means that one just has to declare the intention to undertake fl ight training and send the relevant forms to the competent authority. The pilot training is limited to VFR and N-VFR only. EASA told us: "This signifi cantly lowers the administrative and fi nancial burden for setting up a GA training organisation. There is no need to have an operations or training manual in place, just a document describing the training provided (the training programme) needs to be attached to the declaration." This new and much easier provision for private pilot training will be written down in the Part-DTO which does not exist officially yet.

It is expected that it will come into force by late summer this year, since it is also dependent on the revised version of the EASA basic regulation (216/2008), which is expected to be updated any time soon. In the meantime we need to hold our breath and let us mutually hope that the costs for a private helicopter license will come down – at least a bit.

Jens Rosenow Publisher

Mit diesem Editorial leitet der/die Herausgeber/in oder die Chefredaktion der Zeitschrift 4Rotors - epaper die aktuelle Ausgabe 2/2018 ein. Hier erfahren Sie, welche Artikel besonders lesenswert sind oder woher die Anregungen dazu kamen. …