Peter wrote:
irstly, you would not want to be doing a round the world trip in an EASA reg plane, because if it needs a major signoff then you have to fly out your local CAA (or some other EASA) inspector out to inspect it. Or your CAMO has to authorise some local company to do the work. Whereas if yours is an N-reg then you just need an FAA A&P (or in some cases A&P/IA) and you are done.As regards which way round to collect the papers, in depends primarily on what sort of life you have and how much freedom you have. In an ideal world one would go to the USA and do a full US PPL/IR out there. It will be an efficient process – much better than doing it piecemeal out of Europe and throwing money at various people over here for massively overpriced checkrides. I wrote up the route I did here and that article is reasonably current. You will end up with standalone FAA papers which nobody can take away from you.
Note especially that the Brussels-driven screwing of FAA licensed pilots who are resident in Europe is not in any way going to affect your FAA papers. Only the FAA can take those away from you. They will be the most widely recognised pilot papers in the world, and will always be valid subject only to you getting an FAA medical, FAA BFR, and an FAA IPC. Also this EU move (a long thread here and a summary here) will in no way affect your ability to fly an N-reg outside Euro-land. It is merely the EU trying to screw US licensed pilots into getting European papers in addition to the State of Registry (FAA, for N-reg) papers they need already.
Then, with 50hrs PIC IFR time under your belt, do the CB IR conversion here in Europe and with a European medical you will have a European PPL/IR. No need to sit the Euro IR exams on this conversion route. I am assuming you already have a European PPL.
The FAA IR pilot training is IME a lot more rigorous than the European one in terms of aircraft control (I know this can be debated but a fresh EASA IR holder cannot even file a valid IFR flight plan in the Eurocontrol system ) but the biggest factor in IFR is how current you are on the type.
Thank you Peter for what sounds like some very sound advice.
So an FAA licence is valid in North Korea? 
How weird that the USA should prohibit flights on their own licenses in certain areas… I can understand Somalia though – reminded me of the old British Airways in Frankfurt joke (yes I have been here before but didn’t land)
Ther are some exeptions to these bans. See here for example. But for private pilots, the restrictions apply.
Interesting. So a US airline cannot fly to Damascus FIR?
See 14 CFR Part 91, Subpart M – Special Federal Aviation Regulations
Tripoli FIR (HLLL)
Simferopol FIR (UKVV)
Dnipropetrovsk FIR (UKDV)
Damascus FIR (OSST)
Sanaa FIR (OYSC)
Somalia, below FL260
An FAA pilot license is not valid worldwide. There are a few countries where it is not valid.
Which are those?
An FAA license is valid if you have a BFR and a medical. End of story.
It if of course true that most ICAO contracting states don’t allow any overflight or landing without a permission (hence the use of overflight agents etc on all the long trips e.g. UK to Cape Town) but that is a different thing to saying that an FAA license/rating + N-reg is not recognised.
What you cannot do in many countries is long-term base (long term park, basically) an N-reg. In Europe it is just Norway and Denmark.
What you also cannot do in most countries is to fly a local-reg plane on an FAA (or any non-local) PPL, but that’s a different topic too.
AnthonyQ wrote:
I thought the foreign pilot written was only if you were adding the US Instrument to your 61.75
Yes, thats exactly what I was also told …. so after finishing the FAA PPL and having previously sat the FAA Instrument exam, when I tried to add the I/R to my FAA licence I was then told that I had sat the wrong exam and needed to sit the Instrument Foreign Pilots exam, this was about 1 month later, by which time I had forgotten most of it.
One could say that having sat both exams I must have it right one way or the other!
quatrelle wrote:
Hi Anthony ….. that was the process that I followed to get a standalone FAA PPL, then having already done the I/R Foreign Pilot written I did the FAA I/R flight test back in the UK.
Ok cool…although I thought the foreign pilot written was only if you were adding the US Instrument to your 61.75….i don’t doubt you for a second but I did the Normal Instrument written (not the foreign pilot) to add it to my standalone Private certificate… as you say…lots of ambiguity in aviation!
I was also told that to fly a SET on the N registration I needed a standalone FAA licence, I am still unsure if that is correct or not, but thats what I was told and why I did the standalone licence and not a 61.75.
That’s probably correct if your EASA license only contains SEP privileges. On that case, only those are validated. If you get an stand-alone FAA license, then you’ll get single engine land privileges, which includes SET.
