Membership Benefits

PPL/IR - Europe is the leading group for private pilots across Europe interested in instrument flying. We share insights and publications, lobby politicians and stakeholder groups across Europe on behalf of all pilots. However, we are a non-profit organisation and so limit some of the benefits to paid members. For just £95 per year members get access to a wide range of benefits.

If you are already a member please login here or to register please click here.

To be a source of Continuous Professional Development for Private IFR pilots

pages - kenrick-mills-728501-unsplash.jpgA professional pilot develops continuously, for thousands of hours, between getting his IR and taking command…the recently qualified PPL/IR is expected to jump from the training machine directly to single pilot command.

Flight schools train towards requirements.

If the requirements are that the candidate should be able to fly a departure, airways sector, arrival, hold and approach within certain tolerances, then the school will train the candidate to do those exact things.

Similarly, if a certain level of Theoretical Knowledge is required, that is the level which will be taught.

The flight schools are acutely aware of the costs of training flights and thus do not usually include extra, real world knowledge and experience; that is supposed to come later, and quite rightly so - regulation is there to mandate the fundamentals, but Continuous Professional Development is there to cover the practicalities.

When a fresh CPL or Frozen ATPL emerges from the school and is absorbed into an airline, they will be treated as an absolute beginner. For the next many thousands of hours they will be sitting next to an experienced Captain getting experience. They will have to do Line Training as well as Base Training before they are even qualified for the right hand seat, and will have to undergo Command Training and many more Line Training sectors before being allowed to command an aircraft. This whole process will be repeated if they change aircraft type.

Compare this to the PPL/IR. You walk out of the flight school, holding onto your new IR, having little idea how to actually plan and execute an IFR flight which lands somewhere different from where you took off…something which, in all his IFR training, you are unlikely to have actually done. You are expected to jump in and be Captain from day one, with almost no training, briefing or experience.

PPL/IR Europe fills that gap. We offer advice, training, guidance, even informal mentoring, to pilots who need helping over that knowledge gap. Our books, magazine, website and forum are all dedicated to helping the PPL/IR develop his skills and knowledge.

The range of the advice and guidance we give is too great to list, but examples include:

Procedural issues:

a) How to develop Standard Operating Procedures which keep you safe, even under pressure.

b) How to deal practically with icing

c) The realities of depressurisation

d) How to transition safely between VFR airfields and the IFR en-route system.

Getting the job done:

a) Light aircraft operation is different to CAT

b) How to step outside CAT procedures and stay safe (non CDFA NPAs, for example)

c) Flying in the modern regulatory environment

d) Risk management

Working in Lower Airspace:

a) How to fly en-route within TMAs

b) Flying in and around weather, not above it

c) Pop-up clearances

Working with weather:

a) Where to get information

b) How to interpret it

c) How to determine what real effect it will have.

These are just a very small sample of the ways that PPL/IR Europe members help each other develop from new rating holders to professionally competent pilots.

So that is the manifesto of what we do. We have had to leave out much of the detail from this description, but we hope that it’s enough to give you the general idea!