Working with representatives from the flight training community, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has started work on a new training syllabus for private pilots with the aim, says the Authority, of ensuring ‘future pilots are better prepared for flying safely in the UK’.
Working with representatives from the flight training community, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has started work on a new training syllabus for private pilots with the aim, says the Authority, of ensuring ‘future pilots are better prepared for flying safely in the UK’.
Both the CAA and GA community have highlighted aspects of the current PPL syllabus that could be improved, the Authority listing more information on the use of transponders, GPS, and the airspace system. It is also suggested that things ‘most PPL [holders] will never need to know’ (e.g. purely theoretical or academic information without practical application) could be dropped.
The CAA will liaise with the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and other national aviation authorities in the EU in developing the new syllabus, which will continue to fully meet the requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). ‘Any change to the syllabus will not alter the number of attempts, sittings or validity period of examinations,’ notes the CAA.
“This work is part of a larger project to take a fresh look at the oversight of general aviation and to seek ways in which we can both enhance safety and reduce regulatory burden,”, the CAA GA programme manager, Mike Barnard told Pilot. “We want to empower GA to take on much more of the responsibility for the sector’s safety and for the CAA to get involved only where there is a need for oversight that no other organisation can undertake”
Speaking on behalf of GA organisations, Jeremy Pratt of Airplan Flight Equipment observed: “This is a great opportunity to get a training syllabus that removes some of the items that we all know a PPL holder will never need to know or use, and replaces these with really important safety knowledge that a pilot needs to have but currently may not be well covered in the current syllabus.”
The CAA plans to provide the new syllabus to EASA by early 2014. For updates follow the CAA on Twitter @UK_CAA
