The UK IMC rating / IMCR / IR(R) (merged)

I think not quite. It is the class of airspace that counts and most lower airways in France are not class A or D. Unless you need to get above higher level weather and will be on oxygen the issues are not the same as in the UK.

“I have a PPL with IMC. I am aware that with IMC I can fly IR up to/including ‘Class D’.”

AIUI IFR in any airspace class in the UK except Class A. It’s just that B, C, E and F are little used in the UK except at levels that don’t concern me.

“1. Am I correct to assume that the IMC = IR(R)?”

Indeed, IR(R) is what the IMC Rating was renamed as part of the EASA compromise a few years ago.

“2. My understanding is that with IR(R) I can fly IR/Airways (over the Continent) but must land in VMC. Am I correct?”

IR(R) or IMCR is valid only in the UK so you are VFR only outside the UK.

“3. That means that I can T/O into IMC conditions in the UK, continue IFR/Airways over the continent, then, land VMC at destination (say Cannes).”

You can take-off in IMC in the UK. You cannot fly in any way outside the UK that requires an IR if you have only an IR(R). Exactly what you can and cannot do outside the UK I would not venture to claim any expertise but essentially you are VFR only anywhere outside the UK.

I think!

I think binning IMCR flight plans must be an English thing

Sounds about right

However I still don’t see the point of developing a Eurocontrol-validated route. You may as well file a “V” flight plan with waypoints of your choice, addressed to the ATC units of your choice.

@Ben – the IFR privileges of the IMCR are limited to UK airspace.

Some of what you listed looks like the EIR (“enroute IR”) which is a basically stillborn concept from EASA – it is a pan-European IR which doesn’t entitle you to fly instrument approaches.

Please also note that it is best to avoid the word “airways” when talking about license/rating privileges. It’s use is a UK PPL school invention designed to scare the living daylights out of students who might otherwise bust Class A because they turned at the wrong lake Nowadays some schools also ensure the altitude encoder on the Mode C transponder is broken What matters with regard to license/rating privileges is the airspace class (A B C D E F G). This use of the word “airways” generates lots of posts on UK sites like “can a PPL fly in French airways”… below FL120 a lot of these are in Class E which can be freely entered on a PPL (VFR flight).

Thank you all for your the answers.

Jacko wrote:

Ben, 1. is correct, but you need an EIR for 2.
Then, armed with IR(R)/IMCR and EIR, you can do 3.

Thanks
I didn’t realised that the EIR exist, I know that it was discussed but thought that it is the IR/R.

Peter wrote:

Please also note that it is best to avoid the word “airways” when talking about license/rating privileges. It’s use is a UK PPL school invention designed to scare the living daylights out of students who might otherwise bust Class A because they turned at the wrong lake

OK. I will stop flying in the airways

Already done it via another place, it’d be cheating to do it again.

To help those outside the UK, the IMCR (or since EASA ,the IR(R), valid only in the UK) is an incredibly useful and achievable extension to our PPLs that allows us to do all instrument flying except fly in Class A. There are those who spread the idea to regulators or new pilots that IMC flying for PPLs is an emergency only measure. Not correct, my IR(R) is an extremely useful extension to the utility of my PPL and I use it as such. Only once in the nearly seven years that I have had the rating has cloud covered my windscreen when I wasn’t intending it to. Every other time it has either been planned before flight or become part of my plan as I have flown towards weather and decided in good time that I was safer going up than down. High as the concentration level is, instrument flying is simpler with everything focussed on the flight and navigation displays plus some communication. I feel a lot more stressed and threatened in a sky full of other flying machines in good VMC low level on a summer Sunday than I do in cloud at 4000 feet (when by the way, I am usually in Class G and often without a radar service. We still have some great freedoms in this country).

My recollection from the time of the EASA attempt to kill the rating was that it is clear that the rating has a real life saving effect in the UK compared with other parts of Europe that have similarly unpredictably variable weather.

I don’t for a moment believe the UK CAA will kill the IMCR in 2019. For a start, the UK probably won’t be in the EU by then, so neither side will have much interest in forcing this issue. Then there is the “equivalent safety case” route which the CAA has already said they will invoke to override the EU (they said that in 2008, long before brexit changed the political landscape).

Joe, I don’t think any private pilot would disagree with you, but can anyone recall why EASA wanted to kill the UK IMCR/IR(R)?

Do they still want to kill it?

If so, I s it because people use it to fly safely in IMC? Or perhaps because it seems to have saved lives? Or because it entails as little as 15 hours of flight instruction and only one written exam – albeit on up to the minute stuff like how to use a CRP-1 whizz-wheel and the colours of marker receiver lights?

The reason the EU does anything like this is “standardisation”. Standardisation for the sake of it, or whatever political slant you want to put on it. In the words of Eric Sivel, 2008 (I was present, later sitting in a pub for 2hrs with him and quizzing him on the usual topics He was an old fox.) it was just that. “The UK can keep the IMCR only if every other EU State wants it too”. That of course was a stupid statement, because only Italy has so much Class A. Elsewhere, the IMCR would have been almost a full IR, so politically completely unacceptable.