Commission Decision of 6 February 2014 authorising Sweden and the United Kingdom to derogate from certain common aviation safety rules pursuant to Article 14(6) of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council (notified under document C(2014) 559) (Text with EEA relevance) (2014/69/EU)

2. EVALUATION OF THE REQUEST

2.1. Need

The UK informed that they interpreted JAR-FCL in the past as allowing SFIs to act as tutors on SFI courses after having conducted a specific tutor course followed by an assessment of competence. The UK further described that with the implementation of Part-FCL and the introduction of a more specific wording the privilege to teach applicants for an SFI certificate is granted only to Type Rating Instructors (TRIs) with 3 years of experience as TRIs. In the UK many SFI certified by the UK and working in the role of teaching applicants for an SFI certificate cannot comply with the requirement to become a TRI with 3 years of experience. They will therefore be unable to continue to act as tutors in SFI courses. The UK further specified that many of the current SFIs would be unable to fulfil the TRI requirements for medical reasons.

The UK concluded, based on an assessment of the actual situation, that there is an insufficient number of TRIs to teach a sufficient number of applicants for an SFI certificate and to meet the industry’s training needs. As a result, there will be a shortage of qualified instructors to provide this training which would cause a serious disruption to the training of pilots, particular in the business/corporate aircraft domain. It is therefore necessary to grant the privilege to the SFI that do not fulfil the requirement of having at least 3 years of experience as TRI, to provide instruction for the SFI applicants. The Agency agreed with the justification provided by the UK on the need for this derogation.

2.2. Equivalency of the level of protection

In addition, the UK identified an inconsistency in Part-FCL as the Synthetic Flight Examiner (SFE), who must hold an SFI certificate, will have the privilege to conduct assessments of competence for the issue, revalidation or renewal of an SFI certificate but, at the same time, will not be allowed to instruct these SFIs. The fact that an SFE, being also an SFI, cannot teach a pilot to become an SFI but may examine the SFI is identified as an inconsistency in Part-FCL, because all examiners under the Part-FCL system have the privilege to instruct for the certificates, ratings and licences for which he/she is authorised to conduct examinations.

Part-FCL reflects the JAR-FCL system where the instruction of applicants for an SFI certificate was supposed to be only undertaken by a TRI. Having reviewed the proposals on how the UK intends to further qualify the SFI for such task, the Agency agreed with the assessment of the UK that an equivalent level of protection to that attained by the application of Part-FCL is achieved by the intended derogation, specifically with the additional training and checking requirements suggested by the UK.

It should be highlighted however, that the UK foresees this specific tutor course also for TRIs wishing to provide such training. As Part-FCL already provides this privilege for the TRI wishing to instruct for an SFI certificate if he/she fulfils the 3-year experience requirement such a specific tutor course for the TRI is not required. These courses should therefore only be provided to SFIs.