European Skills test and licence application fees?

I think they say something like “administrative fee” and claiming that they have costs associated with the license that they need to recover.

I find it quite upsetting that the fees the Swedish CAA collect for issuing a PPL can actually be about 10% of the total cost for obtaining the license. That is if you train at a non-commerical school, such as at a flying club.

But the fee-percentage of the total cost for obtaining a PPL is actually even higher if you factor in the fees for the aircraft and for having the RF/(ATO).

Here’s the fee structure in Sweden for PPL.

PPL theoretical knowledge examination fee SEK 5 130
Initial license issue fee SEK 710
PPL Skill Test fee SEK 5 140

In total the PPL fees are SEK 10 980, approximately EUR 1 219 or GBP 1 022

Then there is also a yearly fee to keep the license. This fee is 640 SEK (71 EUR, 60 GBP)

Doing the the ATPL theory in the Netherlands will cost you about 5911 EUR.
The theoretical knowledge course is 3895 EUR and 14 exams x 144 EUR = 2016 EUR.

I did the IR course + exams last year. I was thinking about doing it abroad, but skipped the idea as it gives a lot of hassle (trip / hotel / probably issues with the CAA).

This is going to make you guys feel a lot better: The aviation test fees in The Netherlands:

ATPL, CPL, IR theoratical exam – 144EUR
PPL theoretical exam – 97 EUR
Practical exam – 280 EUR

CPL, MPL, ATPL, CFEL license issuing – 619 EUR
PPL, CPL, RPL license issuing – 596 EUR
RT / LPE rating issueing: 64 EUR

The key to “migration” will be whether the UK CAA (or some other expensive CAA) will accept the resulting paperwork.

In the past they simply didn’t. You can sit the 14 ATPL exams at Athens for something like €5 each (about €70 each in the UK) but the UK CAA would not accept them. The only way they would be any good to you is if you then did all the flight training and the flight test(s) in Greece also. But then you would end up with HCAA-issued licenses, which you would have to transfer to the UK, since the UK CAA is (in this example) holding your medical records! Yes, lots of people did that – doing the whole lot at schools like Egnatia, though often with UK theory passes. But it was never possible to just do bits abroad.

What I hear, unconfirmed as usual, is that the UK CAA is working up various little rules for blocking this kind of tourism. One can see why they would want to do it. If a load of young ATPL wannabees pop down to say Athens and do the theory for €5 x 14, then come back to a UK FTO to do the flight training (because they don’t want to live in say Greece for a year – the girls near Bournemouth are probably “easier”, and the girls near Cranfield are “easier” still ), and then pop back down to Greece for the flight test(s) because they are (or are perceived to be) easier, or you don’t get tested on NDBs (which is a massive effort saver in itself), the UK FTO industry will tear its hair out…

I think at some point there is going to be a fall out from all of this. We had a cpl test booked via flight test bookings. It was a right hassle the guy worked full time and could only do it on certsin days and on some days flight test bookings could supply an examiner. Anyway To cut a long story short it ended up easier for us to book the skills test with an examiner in spain. It wad also cheaper he only paid two hundred euros and he is currently awaiting a refund from the caa.

From a cpl atpl ir and possibly a ppl written exam point og view at some point somone will post an idiots guide to how they passed the written exams in some other european country and how it was much more convient and significantly cheaper.

And once this is out in the open i suspect there will be s mass migration away from theNAA wwhose exams are expensive and oroorganised with the NAA best interest at heart rather thsn their customer’s

Here’s the fee structure in Sweden for the instrument rating.

IR theoretical knowledge examination fee SEK 5 180
Fee to add instrument rating to the licence SEK 710
IR Skill Test fee SEK 5 140

Totals SEK 11 030, approximately EUR 1 226 or GBP 1 025

I can make a similar summary for the PPL if that is of interest.

The UK initial IR test is in the region of £800.

EASA now enables a UK pilot (meaning: a pilot with a UK issued PPL/CPL who wishes to have the IR added to that license) to use a non-UK IR examiner for the initial IR test. However I recall seeing a proposal where the UK CAA will charge about £500 to “brief” such a non-UK examiner. I can’t find the reference right now. I heard that somebody was going to try fighting it… not sure how far they got because fees like this are probably within what each national CAA can set.