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Brexit and general aviation, UK leaving EASA, etc (merged)

I guess from the UK side it would be a merely “adieu” ?

EBST, Belgium

172driver wrote (regarding licence revalidations):

You can do them with any EASA FI / FE in any EASA country.

I didn’t think that was the case. From the UK CAA website:

If you are revalidating your SEP by experience and are flying in a European Member State, please note that a Certificate of Revalidation held on a licence issued by the UK cannot be signed by a non-UK EASA examiner. SEP revalidation by experience can be signed in a UK issued licence by an examiner holding a valid UK issued Part-FCL examiner certificate or a Flight Instructor with the privileges of FCL.945.

Though, as ever, the wording is full of ambiguities. I would have thought (but without knowledge or experience ) that the same held true for all EASA states – i.e. you have to use their FE/FIs.

Old dog learning new tricks

@Christopher, yes, I should have been clearer. What I did for years was to do the flight and the logbook entry with an EASA FI (in my case he also is an FE, but that’s irrelevant here) and then had the paperwork signed and sent to the UK by a friend in the UK who is a FI. Never had a problem.

The CAA have published their approach after the Brexit transition period here CAP1911 local copy

In summary it looks like mainly re-papering for now and effectively granting a further (up to) 2-year transition period for recognition of existing EASA approvals. Existing EU law in force by the end of the year will remain in place but that divergence could be possible.

For UK licence holders, the following slide is important. The way I read is that it is summarising what a lot of people already know and do, i.e. an implicit (almost explicit) recommendation to transfer SOLI to an EU member state so that one can continue to use the Part FCL licence when operating an EASA aircraft registered in an EU member state whilst the UK will validate and accept (hopefully through a relatively simple process) the EASA Part FCL licences. No mention of future conversion though.

EGTF, EGLK, United Kingdom

This part

is still based on the current “maximum hardball, screw the UK” Brussels position. It is a reasonable thing to take into account and act on, for those flying say a D-reg on UK CAA papers, but I bet you that there will be a mutual validation treaty or some equivalent scheme, in the end.

If I was living in the UK I would just transfer the plane to G-reg.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

It is definitely clear now; the UK is leaving EASA.

local copy

EBST, Belgium

I’m very glad I did my SOLI change last year.

Silly. Nobody on either side of the channel will benefit from the UK leaving EASA, though arguably the UK could, in the medium to long term, establish a regulatory regime more favourable to GA. However, UK pilots will then probably be quite limited from flying to EASA-land or at least suffer additional paperwork… and vice versa.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

I am not sure this is anything new…

The general “facts” appear to be:

  • Brussels is tying EASA membership to the ECJ and the UK is not willing to go along with that
  • given the above constraint, the UK is hoping to do a “treaty” with Brussels for some sort of mutual recognition of certification

There is a precedent for the above. For example the US is not in EASA, and neither is most of the known universe, yet things seem to work…

So some sort of deal is likely to be done. Most stuff in aviation is uncontroversial boring stuff.

Also it is clear the UK cannot just do its own thing completely, because that would preclude any sort of treaty with Brussels. In politics, as Bismarck said, it is the art of the possible. So perhaps the CAA can allow you to fly a PA28 within the UK on the medical self declaration (the PMD, as they currently do, with about 4k pilots, but EASA hates that, notwithstanding that France allows that for ULs) but they will never be able to let you do something totally provocative like flying on an ICAO IR on the PMD. And Spain will always have bullfighting.

The bottom line is that nobody knows, because nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, everything is fluid, Belgium – today’s news – is desperate to export potatoes to the UK with zero tariff (instead of 11.5% or 14.5% for WTO tariff for potatoes or chips respectively) and nothing will be agreed until 23:59 on 31/12/2020

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

MedEwok wrote:

However, UK pilots will then probably be quite limited from flying to EASA-land or at least suffer additional paperwork… and vice versa.

At the end we took control of our airfields (which are private PPR) and our airspace (which is dis-joint and sh**y) and our ATC (which are private), getting out of EASA is one battle we manage to win (but sadly no one seems to give a hoot about this in the EU ) and giving all powers to UK CAA seems to be the right thing to do (after all they don’t have that many good people left and ex-RAF colonels know how to make rules better than Brussels bureaucrats )

Last Edited by Ibra at 24 Sep 15:56
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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