Which introductory-flight DNC?
An article in Vol Moteur has caused legitimate concern, relayed on social media, about what is called the “introductory-flight DNC”. What is it about?
The term of office for which we were elected (March 2017) provided, under its regulatory heading, only for the overhaul of microlight regulations, to pragmatically preserve the scope of French-style microlighting within a redefinition of the scope of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency and the very strong inclinations of certain countries to tip our sport into the world of certification. The publication of the new regulations in summer 2018 and the French presidency of the EMF for a year bear witness to the success of a fight that had started rather badly. On the regulatory front, this is the only element we wished to carry forward. It is structuring and decisive for our sport. The instructor reform had been started many years earlier but had become somewhat lost in the arcana of working groups. It was completed in 2016.
On safety and training, all our actions for the past three years have rested on the principle of "increasing safety culture without touching the regulatory framework". We have already had the opportunity to restate (in Vol Moteur too, we like to talk!) the details of this policy, of which we recall a few elements:
- Return to Flying (REV), an incentive-based, voluntary scheme of meetings between pilots and instructors; more than 1700 REVs in 2020!
- ENAC partnership for our instructors (human factors week), first for the teaching managers of instructor training centres, then for new instructors and those who request it, given limited resources (on average 25 a year for the time being)
- Delegation of the microlight theory exam and a joint overhaul of microlight pilot training (to come)
- Professional support for our instructors (sport-to-transport equivalence), appointment of a Ministry of Sport National Technical Adviser for training and safety
- Project to create a microlight instructor scheme
- Safety actions (tutorials), regional safety and training forums
- Partnership with the BEA and the GTA, with training in microlight modules to explain the specific features of our sport
- Regular meetings of the main microlight training centres, expanded safety and training team
- Parachute repacking grants
The diagnosis is fairly simple, and perhaps we were not collectively sufficiently aware of it before: what our 1 200 instructors, who are often alone with their responsibility, have lacked is mainly the resources devoted to training in traditional aviation (framework, courses, training). It is partly these new resources that we have sought to mobilise, and in the current context that is not easy.
Without boasting, we can nevertheless consider that for two years our indicators (number of pilots, flight safety, qualitative feedback) have been favourable. We have to think long term, but we know very well what we could already be blamed for if things went badly, and we also know how marginal regulatory effects are in this kind of problem. It is an overall balance that we have developed in a concerted way. All these coordinated actions cannot be put together in a day.
So what are we talking about with the introductory-flight DNC? We must remember that it is the State, and the DGAC in particular, that makes the regulations, even though we are convinced that good practice means being a co-author of the regulations (like the microlight regulations). About a year and a half ago, the DGAC told us it wished to regulate "professional microlighting". What does this term cover?
Our activities do not fall within public transport, and France has always been committed (for all the activities that are members of the CNFAS) to maintaining the specific framework of the introductory flight (which is in fact called the trial flight). These flights are generally made either by instructors or by pilots authorised to carry passengers. For many years the Federation (and only the Federation) has required in its federal insurance contract that, where the pilot is not an instructor, there must be validation, valid for one year, by either the club president or an instructor. This is good practice, which could be improved but does not cover the whole population of pilots.
In recent years the BEA has notified accidents involving non-instructor pilots, generally freshly trained with passenger-carrying authorisation, who fund their activity by building up an intensive introductory-flight business. This is typically in the problematic risk cone which, in a distorted framework (the trial flight is mainly meant to discover a sport), harms the whole activity, often involving pilots who are not affiliated!
Behind this first reason (which does not appear decisively in recent accident statistics either), there is a less openly stated reason of non-competition with certified flying, without going into the subtleties of taxation on introductory flights in clubs. That taxation is limited as a percentage of turnover, which is not the case in microlighting, where acquiring an individual machine is also made simpler. However, we cannot be blamed for having more modern and varied machines, and this comes at the price of known constraints (two-seaters, daytime only). It can also be noted in return that traditional aviation benefits from tax exemptions (zero-rate loans for acquiring machines) from which microlighting has never been able to benefit despite our requests. We are therefore a long way from flight safety.
To these two reasons is added a DGAC way of looking at the professional world that does not exactly match the specific nature of our sport. The DGAC is indeed attached to a separation between the world of clubs on one side and that of professionals on the other, between federations and unions, or between federations and owners. The sports law of 2001 championed by Marie-George Buffet allows sports federations to affiliate both clubs and companies whose aim is to introduce people to the sport (they represent roughly less than 25% of affiliated organisations); this law has allowed many sports to support their development. In our sport, we have never had large structured clubs as in aeroplanes and gliders, but a very wide variety of clubs. Above all, it should be put in perspective that microlighting, for historical reasons, has never benefited for its clubs from State provision of machines, airfields owned by the State, instructors trained by the State, a litre of petrol at one franc with a petrol pump often owned by the clubs, massive subsidies and very often club employees. This model was highly relevant in the great era of aviation, but it is clearly in crisis and does not match the nature of our sport as it stands. We are therefore fortunate that for 20 years we have had clubs and companies coexisting with clearly guaranteed scopes and statuses. Many outdoor sports are developing on this model. It is therefore inappropriate to set professionals against the rest so radically.
These long reminders are necessary to understand what is at stake in the controversy over "professional microlighting". Unfortunately these specific features are rarely taken on board by all DGAC departments. A year ago, the first draft orders on professional microlighting were a caricature of aeroplane regulation applied directly to microlights (aviation medical examination, machine monitoring…). It is this first version that circulated online. During long meetings, often controversial and always courteous, we argued that this approach was not relevant. It will have no effect on the practice concerned (relatively marginal); it will once again create regulatory stress that does little to encourage teaching good practice, if the aim really is flight safety and training.
It seems to us that this problem could usefully be resolved by including a specific human factors module in the future microlight pilot training programme, which must be modernised as part of the delegation of the microlight theory exam. It also seems to us that closer ties between the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Sport would be useful, notably around the microlight instructor scheme project, and finally that account should be taken of the experience of the federal insurance contract on this subject and of the success of actions such as REV, which allow good practice to be integrated effectively into a leisure activity. A little less regulation and a little more pragmatism!
