Orders of Instruction

In Australia, the pilot licence system changed extensively on 1 September 2014, when the Part 61 rules came into effect. Part 61 refers to the part of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations (1998), which is a 638-page monster of a legal document. Most private pilots were probably not impacted greatly, as licences from the previous CAR Part 5 system were transferred to Part 61 at the pilot’s next biennial flight review. For some pilots with more obscure licence ratings, approvals, instruments and endorsements, Part 61 created some hiccups. For flying school operators, aviation businesses and flying instructors, Part 61 was 638 pages of fine print. To expand on parts of the regulations that were open to interpretation, CASA issued a Manual of Standards (MOS), but the MOS is also difficult to wade through, so to aid pilots, operators and instructors, CASA provided a number of MOS guides. The Instructor Rating Guide is 48 pages long, but the full set of Part 61 regulations, orders, decisions, exemptions, MOS and guides is reputed to be over 6000 pages!

One of the theoretical underpinnings of Part 61 is competency-based training (CBT), and the MOS contains the competency standards required for each qualification, be that a licence, rating or endorsement. So, a Flight Radio Endorsement requires three