General Aviation Pilot Licensing Review Phase 2: Sailplanes

We ran a consultation, CAP2974F, from 13^th March 2024 to 22^nd May 2024 asking the UK General Aviation (GA) community for their views our proposed strategic direction in the second phase of the Licensing and Training Simplification project- Sailplanes.

The consultation covered the following themes:

• Adding the term ‘Gliding Club’ to the list of definitions in Article 2 of the Sailplane Regulations.
• Developing procedures and privileges to authorise student pilots who are following a training course to gain an SPL to exercise limited privileges without the supervision of an instructor, before they meet all the requirements that are necessary for the issue of an SPL.
• Propose changes to theoretical knowledge exams including the number of exams and the validity periods.
• Amend Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC) for powered sailplanes to include partial engine failure.
• Develop a Basic Instructor privilege within SFCL similar to the current BGA Basic Instructor rating and make necessary amendments for aerobatic and self-launching for instructors.

We received 586 responses to this consultation. Most respondents answered the survey questions and a number also left additional comments. The consultation questions were worded in such a way to form a survey that could be quantitatively analysed. 

• We received significant support to add the term ‘Gliding Club’ to the list of definitions in Article 2 of the assimilated Sailplane Regulations UK (EU) 2018/1976, defining it as a club affiliated to the British Gliding Association (BGA), which is created with the aim of promoting aerial sport and leisure aviation.’
• We received significant support to develop procedures and privileges to authorise student pilots who are following a training course to gain a SPL to exercise limited privileges without the supervision of an instructor before they meet all the requirements that are necessary for the issue of an SPL.
• We received significant support to make changes to theoretical knowledge exams including the number of exams and the validity periods.
• We received significant support to amend Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC) for powered sailplanes to include partial engine failure following an AAIB safety recommendation.
• We received significant support to develop a Basic Instructor privilege within SFCL similar to the current BGA Basic Instructor rating.

We received significant support to make necessary changes to amend the privileges of the Flight Instructor to remove the requirement for the Flight Instruction to hold advanced aerobatic privileges if instructing for basic aerobatic privileges as well as amending the privileges of the Flight Instructor to include self-launch in the launching methods.

We will be proceeding with the next phase of this project to develop and move forward with proposed changes.

• We will begin work on drafting the proposed amendments to the Sailplane Regulations, in co-operation with the Department for Transport.
• We are working towards a legislative slot in Spring 2025.
• We will also liaise with internal colleagues to ensure that our systems, internal instructions documents and all staff are ready for the implementation of these changes.

In some areas, we need to develop appropriate Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC), Guidance Material (GM) and other CAA publications (CAPs) to support the planned changes to regulation. These will be consulted on, where necessary, in late 2024 or early 2025.

We have published our consultation response document, setting out these findings in more detail: CAP3032F