Mr. Alan Brereton:

For argument sake, I will give an example, without naming any carriers. If we look at a practice today in Ireland as to how we train pilots where an airline has one division in Ireland and another division in Germany. To move pilots from Ireland to Germany needs what is called an operator’s conversion course because it is actually a different entity of the parent. It is effectively the same airline but is specific to that jurisdiction.

In Ireland, operators can say that a person can do a one-day course and migrate across. The Germans will say that one has to do a two-week course and it is a much bigger hurdle to climb. That is in line with the industry practice across Europe. I recently had a conversation with a member of management who said that if I want to do this in Ireland, I could do it in one day, in the morning, and do it on an e-ground school module, where the pilot just reads and watches a video. The CAA mandates that you have to go into the classroom, you sit with an instructor, you engage and he or she observes you conducting that training. That is just a small example of the difference in how the practical rules are applied between Ireland and our nearest neighbour.