Currency, crew rest, medical grounding, weather minima and the academic rules — the conditions under which this course will and will not fly you.
Most of what follows is about whether you are permitted to fly on a given day. None of it is discretionary, and none of it is a judgement about you.
Currency#
Fourteen days. If more than fourteen days pass between your last sortie in the box and your next one, you return to the simulator before the aircraft, regardless of where you had got to.
Currency is not a punishment for absence. It is an observation about how quickly the approach stops being automatic.
Crew rest#
Twelve hours between the end of any obligation and the start of a sortie brief, of which eight are an opportunity to sleep. The schedule is built to make this possible; you are responsible for using it.
No alcohol within twelve hours of a brief. This is a hard number, it is not adjusted for how much, and the twelve hours runs to the brief, not to the sortie.
If you have not slept, say so. A sortie stood down for crew rest costs the school an aircraft slot. There is no other cost, and nothing is recorded beyond the fact that the slot moved.
Medical and grounding#
You are grounded, by default, for: any illness affecting the ears, sinuses or inner ear; any medication not cleared by the flight surgeon, including over-the-counter medication; any blood donation within 72 hours; and any condition you would hesitate to mention.
Self-grounding requires no permission and no explanation. Tell the crew chief and the sortie does not happen.
The flight surgeon returns you to flying status, not the convenor. This is deliberate: the person who wants the syllabus completed is not the person who decides you are fit.
Weather minima#
Published on the standards page, and they are minima rather than targets. A sortie inside the minima may still be cancelled by the convenor or declined by you. Neither decision requires the other’s agreement.
You may always decline a sortie on weather. You do not have to be right.
Missed sorties#
A sortie missed for currency, crew rest, medical grounding or weather is rescheduled with no academic consequence, and there is no limit on how many times.
A sortie missed for any other reason follows the standard extension process below.
Academic integrity#
The written judgement in week 11 is the only assessment in this course where this is a live question, and the rule for it is specific: the week 10 account it rests on must be the one you wrote the same day, unedited. Improving it afterwards to make the argument tidier is the form of misconduct this course is most likely to see, and the one it is most interested in.
Assistance of any kind is declared. Discussing your decision altitude with other students is expected and is not assistance; having someone else produce the arithmetic behind it is.
Extensions#
Arranged before the deadline, not after, and granted on request for the written judgement. Flying assessments are not extended — they are rescheduled, which is a different process and a more forgiving one.
Getting help#
Ask the person whose name is on the period. For anything that spans the course, or anything you would rather not raise with the person marking you, the convenor’s contact is on the people page.