I never flew in the US, at least for the time being, but I’m in touch with many pilots and instructors there (hi Paul, Jason, Max, Jason) and like to compare US and European aviation. A recent post from Jason about saving money on training lead to an interesting online discussion with Max Trescott during which we exchanged about the organization of flight training on our respective sides of the pond.

The US way of managing training is rather simple: instructors are responsible for everything and work on their own. Please don’t scream back at me with the different FARs about schools, I know that there are different regimes but don’t want to go in the details. As long as the student pass the ground and flight exams, everything is fine. Instructors can train their students for any rating, from PPL to ATPL, IFR, Multi-Engine, … anything.

The European system is slightly different… candidates can not register for an examination on their own, they must be registered by a flight school. There are two kinds of schools: Registered Facilities (RF) which do PPL only and Flight Training Organisations (FTO) who train students for all other ratings and licences (IFR, CPL, ATPL, …). Before training can take place, the instructor, aircraft and student pilot must be “registered” with the school. Schools usually own the aircraft and instructors are free-lance affiliates of one or more school. If you want to train on your own aircraft, it must first be registered with the school. Read that someone has to pay a tax for this registration.

Instructors have to follow a certain syllabus, published by the school and validated by the national Civil Aviation Authority. In JAR countries, this must be compatible with the more general JAA syllabus, but can not be a simple copy of it. The syllabus must define “missions” describing the exercises to be done (steep turns, stalls, type of approaches, …), the prescribed flight plan (departure, destination, time). All flying must be performed according to the school Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which must also be validated by the authorities as part of the training manual.

Needless to say, all training must be tracked. And I’m not talking about logbook entries, but of a personal student file. The exact timing of each part of each mission must be noted. By the end of my MEP / IR training, the file the school had for me was almost half an inch thick. This was only for MEP / IR, I already had an IFR rating before starting. The MEP part of the syllabus was made of the following documents:

• General MEP briefing
• DA 42 briefing
• General MEP questionnaire
• DA 42 specific questionnaire
• List of missions

The total was about 50 pages or so, all produced by the school. This very FTO does not offer integrated ATPL and thus was made of a single man, assuming all the roles (head of traing, chief pilot, …). FTOs certified for ATPL training must be made of at least three persons: Chief of School, Chief Pilot and Quality Manager. The price for all this system is obviously supported by the students…

Which of the two systems is the best ? Hard to say. As long as the examiners do their job independently and with a high level of integrity, both should work. But aviation is a small world, some assume multiple roles, instructor in a school and examiner, or give instruction in different schools. All in all, both systems are producing safe pilots, but at different prices. If you have any experience instructing in the US, or flying on both sides of the pond, your comments are welcome.