The thing to watch with this sort of thing is whether there is a continued useful ratio of privileges versus difficulty.
For example almost nobody is doing the LAPL (or the UK NPPL) – because it isn’t significantly easier to get but is a dead end in terms of privileges. Most people who can pass the PPL exams aren’t stupid and can work this out. These licenses have found one use: people who can’t get the Class 2 medical, but this was hardly the intention. The worst part is that the most utterly dreary part – the written exams and the books assigned to them – are not any more “fun”.
You get the same issue in marketing say products which are supposed to be expandable. Most customers aren’t totally stupid and they can suss out that what you are selling will be a dead end, and they won’t pay for it even if when they took a hard look at their requirements they would realise they won’t ever need the extras.
And when it comes to instrument (IFR) privileges, most competent pilots know that they can fly in IMC without getting caught, and most of those with modern avionics and an autopilot will already be doing it 
What they can’t do overtly is fly instrument approaches, and can’t depart in “not quite VFR” conditions from an airport in CAS.
Neil wrote:
Sounds like a Euro IMC Rating
If that’s the case, it would be 10x more useful than the current EIR, at least around here.
AviatorDelta wrote:
If this is a step towards a Euro IMC rating that would be excellent. Even better if us UK IMC holders were granted privilege automatically :)
The first difference is frankly silly. The ability to safely fly an instrument approach down to 200 ft instead of 500 ft has much more to do with currency than with initial training.
The second difference is meaningless outside the UK as only the UK has the “airways system” concept.
No access to the “airways system”
The “airways system” term is a misnomer everywhere including the UK. It comes from a practice within the UK PPL training business of instilling fear in students of controlled airspace (rather than teaching them to navigate properly ).
The UK IMCR doesn’t give you IFR privileges for Class A,B,C and since most CAS in the UK in which you might fly enroute significantly, and everything around London is Class A, the IMCR keeps people out of there. That in turn dovetails nicely with its reduced training requirement and keeps the “professionals” happy by keeping the “amateurs” out of “their” airspace, so the political objections are sidestepped.
In most other countries (not Italy) a similar privilege would allow a lot of access to CAS and would be politically unacceptable unless the training was ICAO equivalent.
Hi Peter. If I’m understanding you correctly, you are suggesting that a Euro-wide IMC equivalent would have no obvious “concession” to the professional world to allow for a potentially reduced training requirement and therefore would not ever be viable? If so I better not get my hopes up! 
Well, they do have this as a point:
despite the focus on GA needs, practical training and examination standards will be similar to
those of the ICAO IR, particularly with regard to interaction with other airspace users. It is very
important that GA pilots flying under IFR have the required competencies for this.
The obvious problem with this sort of thing is that it opens the door to discrimination against private pilots, so they could be excluded from e.g. some airspaces
I think this reflects one or several other problems. Slow and light airplanes creates problems in the traffic flow dominated by heavy jets. The same problem is found for helicopters. Everyone is better off if they are handled separate from heavy jets, and there is no problems doing it.
Slow and light airplanes creates problems in the traffic flow dominated by heavy jets
However, for some magical reasons, ATC has no apparent problem dealing with the same aircraft flown by holders of the full IR
Outside the terminal areas, Europe’s airspace is an empty void. You could fly Shoreham-Prague 100 times, FL100-FL150, and not spot a single aircraft within 5000ft vertically. In the terminal areas ATC achieve separation by extended vectoring, mainly.
Peter wrote:
However, for some magical reasons, ATC has no apparent problem dealing with the same aircraft flown by holders of the full IR
I think slow traffic does cause some difficulties BUT there aren’t many full IR holders are there?
The counter argument is always the USA where they fit in all sorts. I have flown a Cessna 177 into New Orleans and when I was in Chicago a few weeks ago I saw an SR22 at O’Hare.
I think slow traffic does cause some difficulties BUT there aren’t many full IR holders are there?
I’d say there will never be enough private pilots flying IFR to cause trouble – for all the reasons discussed so often.
The lower airspace can probably take another 10x traffic increase before anybody will notice.
I’d have to imagine most of the speed difference issues happen in terminal areas (or most specifically the final approach). Most slow GA doesn’t mix with the busiest jet airports anyway because GA is effectively prohibited from those airports, and at the remaining mixed/GA airports, the density of commercial airliners isn’t that high, and the speed differences can be mitigated by “keep your speed up”. Even a C172 can fly an ILS at 120 knots if push comes to shove. In the US, I’ve flown an ILS into Austin at something like 140kt (Boeing 737 approach speed) in a Bonanza when I had an airliner behind me – the Bonanza’s got a high enough gear down speed to do it, and with the gear down you can get rid of the speed pretty handily in the last stages of the approach, and the ILS tends to terminate in a very long runway anyway.
