Meeting with the IAA and heartfelt thanks

As most of you will already know, we met with Mr Eamonn Brennan, CEO of the IAA, this afternoon. We invited Mr Joe Davy, CFI of Ormonde Flying Club, to join us as representative for the microlight schools. The meeting was well represented by the IAA with Kevin Humphreys, Declan Fitzpatrick, Terry O Neill, Martin Purcell and John Steel in attendance.

It would be near impossible for me to cover the whole 2 hour meeting in this mail so I will confine it to the main points. For those of you wishing to hear the bones of it we would suggest that you put Sunday the 16th of May, 12 noon in the Bridge House Tullamore in your diary and attend the NMAI AGM.

What was agreed was a minimum 30 hr licence to be comprised of 15 hrs Dual and 10 hrs supervised solo to include 5 hrs cross country.

Class 2 medical will remain a requirement for the forseeable future but will be reviewed following any future rulings by EASA on the medical for the upcoming LAPL. This could possibly take up to 2 years.

The theoretical knowledge exams will be tailored to suit microlights and the NMAI have been asked for our help to achieve this. The Authority do not at this time envisage these exams being administered in house but will look at the possibility of holding exams off site depending on demand. They also plan to hold exam sittings in Aviation House in the future and increase the frequency of these sittings to every 2 weeks with a view to making them computer based, much like the driving theory test.

Visiting pilots or those converting will be required to sign an attestation declaring that they understand the differences with Irish Air Law.

Validation will be for 90 days with an option of a further 90 days if this is required. This would allow for visiting pilots to fly under the privileges of their current licence and would also allow resident pilots who may have trained outside of the state to continue to fly whilst they arrange for conversion to an Irish licence.

One sticking point was the mandatory requirement for an RT licence. We explained that it was not a legal requirement except for entry to controlled airspace and also pointed out that flight in controlled airspace required the aircraft to be transponder equipped and less than 10% of our fleet were transponder equipped. These points were taken well by the Authority and discussed at length.

Mr Brennan himself insisted that he thought everyone should have RT and that if it was up to him we'd have to have it but he could see our point and it is now left for further discussion.

It was agreed that training from unlicenced fields will be accepted and that this part has already been completed.

Microlight policy will now be decided and published either late in the 2nd quarter of 2010 or early in the 3rd quarter and a review of this policy would take place in 24 months.

We now have quite a lot of work to complete with the IAA in a relatively short space of time in order to finalise and secure a reasonable and workable policy for microlight aircraft but believe that we have certainly turned the corner and taken a considerable step forward. Thats where the heartfelt thanks come in.

Thanks to Eamonn Brennan for his intervention, to Joe Davey for making himself available at short notice and a heartfelt thanks to YOU, the membership, for your support when the chips were down. Without that support none of this would be possible.

This is absolute proof of what can be achieved when we all stick together and pull in the same direction.

It's YOUR sport.....................Please keep supporting it

All the best
Paul

Sorry everyone

I forgot to mention in the original post that the new Irish 30 hr licence will also include an RT endorsment.

All the best
Paul