The federal government has taken the first legislative steps to establish the multi-crew pilot’s licence in Canada.
Changes to the Aeronautics Act were published in the Canada Gazette on Wednesday and will become law in 60 days. The new licence will allow ab initio students to train strictly for the job of flying an airliner, rather than take the usual route of cross training from the military or advancing through the private and commercial licences with multi-engine and IFR ratings.
Conversely, those who attain the MPL will have to earn the other licences and ratings separately if they want to fly anything but a two-pilot turbine-powered pressurized airliner.
The MPL is designed to streamline training and allow new pilots to start working with as little as 250 hours of flight and simulator time. The MPL training stresses cockpit resource management and risk and threat evaluation and management that is specific to the airliner cockpit environment, rather than the pilot-in-command focus on individual skills and decision making that is the focus of existing flight training programs.
It’s aimed at providing a pipeline of new pilots needed to fill the right seats of tens of thousands of airliners that will enter service in the next 20 years.
The new sections of the Aeronautics Act will form the legislative basis for the MPL but there is plenty of practical work left to do. Certification of approved training organizations who want to offer the course is next.