Contribution
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 65A, through which I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the issue of instrument training. I confess that it is a dry subject, but it is essential and falls within the scope of group 5.
The CAA published its refreshed general aviation strategy in October 2025, setting out its vision for
“A safe, innovative, and sustainable general aviation sector”
operating within
“a proportionate and supportive regulatory environment”.
In the report, the CAA acknowledged that, while progress has been made,
“The GA sector faces … challenges including declining flying hours, a stagnating number of recreational pilot licence holders, as well as an ageing fleet of aircraft”.
One very challenging aspect facing general aviation at present, which has not been adequately addressed, is support for self-improver pilots in instrument training: the pilots who pay their own way from initial training for a private pilot’s licence through to commercial pilot qualification and who have, incidentally, traditionally made up the vast majority of commercial pilots. This access to instrument training challenge also applies to students on approved airline pilot training courses, and this reinforces the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Ainsdale: no training, no pilots. One of the essential ingredients to becoming a commercial pilot, or indeed an additional qualification for any private pilot, is instrument rating. I assure noble Lords that it is an exacting test of 55 hours of blind flying, mathematics and flying skill that allows pilots eventually to fly in and make approaches to airports in marginal weather conditions.
The challenge pilots undertaking training now face, however, is access to airports with the facilities to enable training for the instrument rating qualification. Currently in the UK, there is a complete lack of instrument approach training slots. The whole of the UK professional flight training industry cannot deliver for UK-based students the full range of navigational performance training which is reliant upon satellite-based signals. As I pointed out at Second Reading, worse still, all these GPS-supported approaches are only two-dimensional, lateral and non-positional. Three-dimensional precision requires the European geostationary navigation overlay service—EGNOS—safety-of-life service to enable the airport to provide this. I will not dwell on EGNOS, as there will be more of that later.
Across the channel, in places such as Jersey and in other European countries, and indeed in the USA, a full suite of approaches to training aircraft is available, as they still benefit—certainly in Europe at least—from the EGNOS signal in space. This is a loss of revenue and skills base to the UK. Similarly, air traffic control officers cannot do more than train in simulation for 3D approaches, which can get as low as 250 feet above the runway.
Many UK instrument rating instructors and CAA examiners have highlighted the issues relating to the instrument rating training. The situation has been ongoing for the past 15 years and has been noticeably worse in the last 10 years. The situation has been highlighted to the Civil Aviation Authority, but as yet nothing has been addressed.
My amendment seeks to find a remedy to account for the lack of opportunity for instrument training through the limited availability of suitably equipped airfields. There are many reasons for it: the closure of UK airfields; the removal of instrument landing systems, partly due to the expense of maintaining them to the approved standard; the availability of navigational aids at the airfields that remain open and which accept training flights; the cost of transit flights for the students to access airfields with required navigation aids; and the general shortage of air traffic controllers, both civil and military. Quite a number of airports in the UK do have facilities, although they are not made easily accessible for one reason or another, yet at varying times of the day they have a certain amount of redundancy. Furthermore, a large number of military airfields with the necessary facilities also have a great deal of redundancy.
In conclusion, the purpose of my amendment is to open the debate to see whether there is a way to encourage availability where there is this redundancy. I fully recognise the challenge this creates across government departments, but the situation has become quite dire and the solution requires some thought. I hope that the Minister appreciates my concern and is willing to give some thought to the solution, together with the CAA, which, of course, is responsible for licensing the instrument approaches.