In March 2024, we launched a 10 week consultation on phase two of the general aviation pilot licensing and training simplification project.

In September we released the consultation response documents covering aeroplanes, balloons, gyroplanes, helicopters and sailplanes.

In this episode we’re joined by Ed Bellamy from our General Aviation Unit, who will be providing a helpful overview of the consultation feedback and next steps.

CAP3032A: General Aviation Pilot Licensing Review Phase 2: Aeroplanes Consultation Response Document

CAP3032E: General Aviation Pilot Licensing Review Phase 2: Helicopter Consultation Response Document

CAP3032F: General Aviation Pilot Licensing Review Phase 2: Sailplanes Consultation Response Document

CAP3032G: General Aviation Pilot Licensing Review Phase 2: Gyroplanes Consultation Response Document

Welcome to the General Aviation podcast from the UK Civil Aviation Authority.

Hello and welcome to another episode of our general aviation podcast. My name is Marnie Burroughs, and I will be your host for this session. On the podcast today, I'm joined by Ed Bellamy from our General Aviation policy team. If you can please take a minute to introduce yourself and your role at the CAA and a bit on your background in aviation.

Thank you. Marnie, yeah. So I'm a Policy Officer in the GA unit, so I work on a variety of different rulemaking and policy projects. Background wise, I've been a GA pilot for goodness, nearly 20 years now. I've worked on and off the CAA for the last 10 years. I also spent a certain amount of time working for European airline, both flying the line and in safety and compliance. Some of you might know me as the editor of the Skyway code and also the CAA Safety Sense leaflets.

So to start us off, I'd like to cover a little bit more about licensing, for those people that might not know much about the project, so the general aviation licensing review, also known as GA licensing and the training simplification project, started in ‘21 and has involved reviewing all areas of assimilated law and air navigation order ‘16 relating to non commercial and GA flight training activities in non complex aircraft, which is to include a view to making requirements simpler and more proportionate where appropriate. The review commenced after CAP 1-9-8-5 had a consultation in ‘20 which identified improvement of flight crew licensing regulations as a high priority, and on the 12 September, we released the phase two consultation response documents relating to the review. This followed on from the consultation that was held in early ‘24 covering airplanes, helicopters, gyroplanes, sailplanes and balloons. So Ed, let's start with airplanes. What's in the consultation response document that you feel is important to highlight to the community?

So with airplanes, we've looked at potentially areas, particularly in the part FCL regulations that we inherited from the EASA system at areas where they potentially exceed the requirements of ICAO Annex one. And we've also looked at areas where we can bring, particularly the microlight world, a little bit closer, and have more crediting and cross compatibility in the system with that of the world of larger aircraft. So specifically, we've looked at the ICAO PPL, which is normally the part FCL PPL for most people, albeit we also have a UK PPL in the ANO, and we're going to make a number of revisions to it, which we set out in the CRD so the qualifying experience for the PPL and annex one is 40 hours, whereas under part FCL and FCL before it was 45 so we're going to take that back down to 40 and we're also going to change that from 45 hours flight instruction to 40 hours of flight time as airplanes in line with the ICAO text. The reason for doing that is essentially to make it more flexible for people who are coming from perhaps having a sub ICAO license, so the national private pilot's license, for example, so that they accredited more hours if they want to get a full ppl annex one also includes an option for a 35 hour ppl course, when conducted at an approved training organization. And although I think it's fair to say most people will struggle to achieve you know that in reality, it's in Annex one, and I think you know a candidate with high aptitude who trains intensively could actually achieve that. So we're going to put that in as an option if ATOs want to, want to take us up on it. So that's kind of the PPL. Moving on to the sub ICAO license. This has been a major area for the review, because one of the one of the issues that we had to contend with when we started was that we've essentially ended up with two sub ICAO airplane licenses. So we've got the national private pilot's license, which was originally introduced in 2002 into the air navigation order. And then when EASA FCL came in between kind of ‘08 and ‘12 that brought in the light aircraft pilot's license, which essentially did the same thing, albeit was valid, you know, throughout Europe now, obviously we've left the EASA system now and the LAPL, so the UK LAPL is no longer, you know, recognized in in Europe. So we've ended up with some duplication in the system, and we've decided, for now at least, we're going to go back to the NPPLA as being the main supply license for the UK. We're going to make a number of revisions to that to better integrate the microlights with the other elements of the license. So those are the two main focus areas in the airplane category, the ICAO ppl, and the changes to the qualifying experience to make that more flexible, and also the revisions to the sub ICAO license to designate the NPPL as the single sub ICAO licence for the UK, and make appropriate revisions to it. In addition to that, there are also going to be a few other kind of more miscellaneous issues relating to airplanes that we've set out decisions on, one of which is revalidation. So for the SEP, TMG and microlight ratings, going to align the requirements across all licenses in the ANO and part FCL, including also for existing LAPL A holders, in line with a slightly revised ice experience requirement. So the moment there are a few misalignments between the LAPL or the MPPL A and the PPL A in terms of revalidating those ratings that I mentioned. So we're going to synchronize them all with slightly revised requirements compared to the 12 hours and 24 months that people will be familiar with. We're going to change that so that six hours are now permitted in the first year of validity. And the training flight, refresher training flight you have to do every two years will also be now permitted at any time during the validity period, which is already the case for the MPPL, but for the PPL, it's currently the case you have to do that in the second year. So we're making things a little bit more flexible. And everyone, the MPPL, LAPL and PPL will now follow that model. The aerobatic rating will also come in for new ANO license holders. At some point in the future, we're removing the sailplane rating from PIFCL completely because we were satisfied that the legacy BGA training requirements in that regard that predate part of CLR, you know, were acceptable. So we're going to go back to that system, and we've also looked at more proportionate requirements for the use of non part 21 aircraft, many of which permit aircraft when used for training at training organizations under the part FCL regime.

Thanks, Ed, that was a really helpful overview of airplanes moving on to helicopters and gyroplanes. I know there haven't been as many changes made to these licence types. So can you just overview the changes that are going to be made?

Yeah, indeed. So with helicopters, we looked at the type rating requirements applicable to the PPL H, and decided they were largely fit for purpose. So there won't really be any change in that regard. The LAPL H will remain the main sub ICAO licence for helicopters, although we are considering removing, as you probably saw from the consultation, the LAPL H syllabus in favour of everyone just following the PPL H syllabus. Albeit, they'll get a LAPL at the end of it if they can't meet the PPL medical requirements. The gyroplanes, there's been a few clarifications. So for example, the status of differences training when going between different types of gyroplanes is going to be more clearly spelled out, and also indicated that that is mandatory a little bit more flexibility around the solo supervision of restricted flight instructors. Because one of the issues with that in the gyroplane world is that, because it's so small, it's quite often difficult for FI’s to get their restriction removed, to move up to a full FI particularly with regard to the solo supervised time. So we're going to allow a bit more flexibility for what constitutes supervised solo so that flight instructors can move towards getting that their restriction lifted. We're also going to be looking at the as part of future work, the flight training and TK credits towards other aircraft categories, something that's existed in the past, and also potentially going to a declarative system for gyroplane training organizations which do a flight instructor training. Currently, they have to be approved, but we might be able to move to a model more along the declared trainee organization like you have, or a PPL trainee.

Thanks. Ed, so with sailplanes, pre EASA, sailplanes weren't formally regulated, so I know we were faced with an interesting question at the start of the project, whether to revert to the previous arrangement under the BGA or continue with sailplane regulation. What conclusion did we come to in the end on sailplanes?

So indeed, it was an interesting question. And the view that emerged from the working group, which included external stakeholders such as the BGA, quite early in the project actually, was that we wanted to continue with the sailplane regulation implementation. And this question was put in the first thematic consultation for the project in ‘22 and the feedback from the community as well was that actually we want to continue with the sailplane regulation as inherited from the EASA system, albeit with some appropriate revisions to make it, you know, more appropriate for the UK. So having made that decision, we then set to work on what elements of the sailplane regulation can we potentially improve? One of the major things that's going to be done is that the BGA gliding club will be formally recognised in the regulation as a form of organisation has certain privileges, and that will be defined as a gliding club affiliated with the BGA and created with the aim of promoting aerial sport and leisure aviation. So by giving gliding clubs that status in the regulation that kind of circumvents certain issues around approvals of as a training organisation, for example, some of the other tweaks to the sailplane regulation that we've looked at is developing privileges and procedures for unsupervised local flight pre SPL issue. So at the moment, under the sailplane regulation, unsupervised flying pre, getting your full sailplane license is somewhat restricted compared to what it was under the old BGA system. We're going to look at that in the regulation and develop some guidance on that. Also going to look at the TK procedures, as you will have seen the CRD there's some tweaks that have been made in that regard. And we're going to introduce something called the basic instructor racing, which again, is to replicate a feature of the old BGA system, which is currently not really in SFCL, but will make it easier for people to progress through the instructor pathway, and we're working on the AMC, the acceptable means of compliance for that and the syllabus, and that will go to consultation late this year, early next in time for the revised regulations coming in next year.

Thanks for that overview, Ed. And last, but certainly not least, let's talk about balloons. What's the high level overview of the consultation response document?

So the balloon element of the project consisted of both the private and the commercial side of things, which I'll come on to. In terms of high level, although for the CRD will continue with the transition into bfcl requirements, with BPL continuing to replace the PPL BA and the CPL B that were previously issued under the air navigation order. However, existing PPL balloon airship licences will be deemed valid indefinitely for group A balloon. So that's up to 34 hundred cubic meters capacity. So we've granted an alleviation in that regard. However, one thing that will be changing for those existing license holders is there will be a refresher training requirement coming in, which is already in BFCL, BFCL 160 I think it is, every 48 months, and that will apply to all BPL holders and all BPL BA holders going forward. But we've also tweaked the element of BFCL that refers to flight experience. So we're adopting the flight experience bit. We're adopting a model that's actually closer to the old ANO text or for the PPL BA, because we felt that was more achievable in practice given the kind of typical flight profiles of private balloons. But there will be no new PPL BA, or CPL B licenses issued after the 30 September next year, and this is something that we felt was necessary to achieve the kind of overall project objective of simplifying the legal basis or FCL regulation across the board. Another alleviation that we're granting from the current PFCL requirements is that ATL DTO will no longer be required for initial BPL training, which will be quite a significant alleviation. So that's kind of the sum of it on the private side, on the commercial side, we have a slightly different balance, obviously, to strike between safety and proportionality for commercial passenger ballooning particularly and so in some areas, the BFCL requirements are actually going to be beefed up a bit. This was largely supported by the UK ballooning community. You know, UK commercial ballooning generally has a very good safety record, and everyone's keen to preserve that. One thing that we will be doing, though, is splitting the current commercial rating and BFCL into a passenger, non passenger rating. And as I say, they're going to be increased experience, flight experience requirements across the board, for, you know, in a number of areas, for commercial ratings, and also for instructing and examining towards those ratings.

Thanks Ed, that was a really, really helpful overview of all five of the licence types. So to go on to a couple of other questions around the project. I know we had a lot of input to the consultations from the general aviation community. But was there anything in the feedback from that that surprised you?

Yeah, so a few things, I think so, as we were discussing earlier, the question around sailplanes and whether to continue the sailplanes regulation, that was really interesting to see that actually both the BGA and the community and the wider community wanted to continue with that. Another thing that surprised me, perhaps a little bit, was on the aeroplane side of things, we looked at potentially removing the flight experience requirement as part of the revalidation requirements for the SEP, TMG and microlight class ratings, on the basis that our accounting of experience is something that is quite unique to Europe, like not many other states outside of Europe, for example, the US, South Africa, Australia, for example, they don't really do that. You've generally got, like, a bi-annual flight review or just proficiency check. So we did ask a question in the consultation about whether we could just go to a model like that and do away with, perhaps the complexity of, you know, having to count a certain number. Hours. But actually the feedback from the community was generally against that notion, which is one of the reasons why we've stuck with flight experience. So that, I must admit that did surprise me slightly.

And following on from that, how have you approached issues where there is a compromise to be struck between simplicity and flexibility?

So this is a really interesting one. Obviously, the project is entitled licensing and training simplification. Obviously, simplification was a large component of that, but sometimes proved to be a bit of a misnomer, insofar as I think people would rather have sometimes a slightly more complex and therefore flexible system, and be allowed to do more than have a more simple system that perhaps just applied a higher standard to everyone. So the simplest thing to do, from our point of view, would have been just saying, look, there's our ICAO annex one, you know, and those are the rules. But clearly that creates issues, particularly with things like medical standards, where there's not really any alleviation from, for example, class two requirements. So we found, as we've got into the detail of things, that actually people tend to like having sort of alleviations, if it does allow them to do more. So we had to slightly, I suppose, dilute that kind of simplicity objective and balance it out with other things.

So we've covered a lot about the licensing review today, and obviously it's been quite a long running project. What are the next steps? Where are we going next, with the next phase of the project?

So to underpin the decisions in the consultation response document, we've written something called an opinion and instruction document, or a suite of those regulations. That's the air crew regulation, the air navigation order, sailplane and balloon regulations, and these are now sent to the Department for Transport rulemaking team for transition into actual legal text. We've just started that process. Our aspiration is, although there's still some uncertainty over the legislative timelines, that that will go forward to legislation in spring next year, with in four states shortly thereafter, so around Q2 / Q3 next year. Alongside that, we've also got to draft a certain amount of acceptable means of compliance and guidance material, AMC and GM, and that's something else that we're working on in parallel, and there'll be a further consultation on that towards the end of this year or early next.

Thanks for your time today, Ed and we will obviously continue to communicate timelines to the rest of the GA community when we know more. And just to say that all the policies that were mentioned in this podcast, plus anything else that may be relevant to the topic, can be found in the podcast notes below, if you have any comments or questions either on this podcast, or if there's a topic you'd like us to cover in the future, please do get in touch with us at gapodcast@caa.co.uk Thank you so much for listening.

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