Peter wrote:
I have not heard of any other country doing it.
We had it here, but it has changed from a volontary system into one where on HAS to report certain incidents and where punishment is no longer ruled out. Massive step in the wrong direction imho. The same goes for accident investigation: Our local STSB has to hand over most of their investigative data to the prosecution office as a rule. That is something I think is totally against safety culture. Prosecution of accident victims here in this country is something which has made me think of stopping to fly, as the risk is tremendous. I know of a case where both parties in a mid air collision (all survived) were sentenced to harsh sentences by the courts even though the report said they could not have seen each other but with a lot of luck. This is not a good development at all.
Peter wrote:
That is a NASA-run scheme in the US.
The NASA ASR system would be an important step towards more safety for EASA land.
One myth currently doing the rounds on one UK site is that flying an IAP under VFR implies you are flying a “practice approach”, so you cannot do it solo as a PPL.
SERA3220 requires you to carry a safety pilot if you are carrying out ‘simulated instrument flight’ – flight rules and licence are irrelevant, why else would you fly an IAP in VMC other than to ‘simulate instrument flight’ for practice? so I would agree a safety pilot is likely to be required.
So if I fly (IFR) an ILS approach I can do it single pilot.
If I fly in the same controlled airspace (VFR) and fly a simulated ILS approach I need a safety pilot?
How does that make any sense, anything safer?
Flying in uncontrolled airspace under VFR and simulating IFR using foggles it would make sense o use a safety pilot (except for the UK).
In FAA-land you can fly a simulated IAP in VFR solo, as long as you don’t use foggles (or any other sight-limiting device). If you do, you need a safety pilot, who does not need to hold an IR, but must otherwise be legal to fly the airplane. ATC phraseology is ‘cleared for practice XYZ approach, remain VFR, no separation provided’.
By EASA’s definition, instrument flight time(no matter if it is simulated or not) does not matter if you do an approach or not. See here:
“Instrument flight time” means the time during which a pilot is controlling an aircraft in flight solely by reference to instruments.
I guess that it is no use to handfly an ILS without doing that, you will get unestablished. But if you have an autopilot that flies it for you and you use most of the time to look outside, I would say that you can fly any approach you like VFR without the safety pilot.
In FAA-land you can fly a simulated IAP in VFR solo, as long as you don’t use foggles (or any other sight-limiting device)
Exactly.
The problem is with the assertion that flying an IAP (under any circumstances) is “instrument flight”. There is no regulation AFAIK which supports that extension. It obviously doesn’t need to be IF – as this video shows, of a flight done on the autopilot
ATC phraseology is ‘cleared for practice XYZ approach, remain VFR, no separation provided’.
And I hear this on the radio in the UK a fair bit, too.
You are just flying a trajectory in the air which just happens to be published as an IAP. If that foced the flight to be IFR then flying some airway (in anything below Class A) under VFR would be illegal too.
Whether this is useful for instrument practice is a different discussion 
One previous thread here.
Balliol wrote:
SERA3220 requires you to carry a safety pilot if you are carrying out ‘simulated instrument flight’ – flight rules and licence are irrelevant, why else would you fly an IAP in VMC other than to ‘simulate instrument flight’ for practice? so I would agree a safety pilot is likely to be required.
“Simulated instrument flight” means that you limit your field of vision so that you can’t see outside. Obviously you don’t have to do that when flying an IAP.
Surely if you are flying an IAP you have your eyes inside the aircraft, on the instruments even in VMC, therefore, if you are not under ATC you need a safety pilot to look for other traffic, see and avoid.
