I see 3 main Points to be clarified here:
1. FAA: this is the main Point. FAA writes: “When operating an aircraft within a foreign country, a pilot license issued by that country may be used”. I am ok then in Austria. If I ask Austrocontrol they say actually I can fly in Austria (I asked already), they do not go further beyond the borders because they are not competent. So I would say once the FAA is ok with it I do not see any issue here (once I own a written Statement, yes Peter you are right 
).
2. COUNTRY ISSUING THE LICENCE: as mentioned they cannot make any Statement beyond their border, once they agree to fly within the Country, the Problems could arise if another Country does not agree with the association N-Register <=> other EASAcountry licence. Can this happen considering that on my licence it is writted in capital letter EUROPEAN UNION?
3. INSURANCE: this as Peter said is a good Point. Of course an insurance when something happen can step out if they find good reasons to do so. Consider that a friend reported to me that (I do not know further detail) after an accident occurred in Malta where some People died, the insurance stepped out because the Pilot had ist own check list and this was not compliant with the POH.
Still it means FAA will not care much as long as the airspace owner is ok (the wording they have in th FAR is fine for that) but I agree they will not take the hassle to change the FAR for that only, so the matter will always stay grey
On operating EASA aircraft outisde the EU, I enquired about this twice (I was looking to fly in morocco on UK papers), back in 2012 the answer was a strict no (asking specifically if I can fly a German TMG locally) and this summer the anwser was a weak yes (flying a spanish C172 from spain), still that answer did not give enough confidence to go ahead,
Unless you get a writing anwser from a high profile guy, or you are a high profile guy, the legality of it is like “walking on eggshells” when it come to insurance/regulator after the facts for sure no one will care when everytging is ok….
The FAA is not really that involved over here in Europe on the pilot licensing side. This also happens to give a lot of ammunition to EASA, and to all the assorted N-reg haters in Europe (loooads of them around the flying scene, especially in CAAs and FTOs) who say we need to regulate everybody under local laws.
There are established procedures under ICAO whereby one country can ask another to prosecute a pilot on their behalf. I got this in 2003 and the CAA here told me this happens a lot, and often – as in my case – without proper process having been followed especially, they said, from the DGAC. It just doesn’t get posted on forums… Whether the FAA does it I don’t know, and obviously few European based pilots will be busting airspace etc in the US and then disappearing in one leg to Europe. There are maintenance / airworthiness related stories in that topic, however (FWIW, never supported by detail). I do know for an absolute fact that the FAA has busted (banned/suspended) A&Ps/ A&P/IAs / DARs / DPEs working in Europe, but that is even further away from the topic of pilot licensing (well, except that if you got a checkride with a banned DPE you wouldn’t have ever got the FAA license in the post).
So the risk is really with insurance. Remember that the insurance company can just say they won’t pay and why, and it is for you to sue them. So you are not in a great position… when the injured party has just got a court judgement for a few hundred k and you have to sell your house because the insurer is not paying out.
3. INSURANCE: this as Peter said is a good Point. Of course an insurance when something happen can step out if they find good reasons to do so. Consider that a friend reported to me that (I do not know further detail) after an accident occurred in Malta where some People died, the insurance stepped out because the Pilot had ist own check list and this was not compliant with the POH.
The usual position these days is cause and consequence. If the cause of the accident was in consequence of an illegality the insurance may duck out. If the people had died because the wing fell off no amount of failure to carry out checks in accord with the poh would have prevented the accident.
We did this here recently, and I suspect that – in aviation at least – it is more complex. The obvious (if banal) argument is a pilot’s license and medical having lapsed. Let’s say he flies 100hrs a year so has no shortage of currency. I would be amazed if the insurer paid out on in a crash, because the lack of license/medical was not a cause of the accident. If they did, why have a PPL, or why have a car driving license at all?
In the UK there has certainly been a drift in the retail consumer sphere for the insurance watchdogs to force insurers to pay out where the omission was not relevant to the cause. This followed some notorious non payout cases (e.g. insuring a house with 2 residents declared but actually you had a lodger living there also, and the cause was arson unrelated to anyone there). But aviation is not exactly a retail consumer sphere… it’s more complicated, not least because so many GA planes are owned via a company. And you won’t get sympathy in a newspaper.
There is little real data because nobody involved wants to talk about this openly, but one assessor told me the biggest factor is the claim size. For say 10k, that’s one thing and hardly worth the assessor’s trip, but if it is 100k or 1M they will look at it much more carefully.
The guy also told me that they don’t pay out if the flight was illegal before it departed (implying no license, no CofA, etc) and in the context of this discussion the legality of a flight in an N-reg in say France on a German-issued EASA PPL is the very issue in hand.
I do know of regular illegal flying and the cases I know of are all done by very wealthy people, who could just buy another plane anytime. Also they fly well away from places where they would draw attention.
In the other hand, the FAA will not (practically) prosecute someone (+aircraft) based permanently in Europe for fcl violation facts that happened in the EU neither, unless that guy is a big fish…
Initially, the move on foreign registered aircrafts in europe was mainly on commercial aspects (a similar story happened on airliners maintenance), tough the N-reg in private GA scene got most of the fallouts (this also gave blank cheque to “N-reg heaters” to take on the private licences and ownership side but also the extra bits: maintenance, dpes, engineers…that may fall under “buisness category”)
Yes, agree most of these will not matter much, the big risk from “N-reg opinions” is rather “financial/reputation” than “legal problems” (void insurance, loss in resale/marketing value…) but as there are no concrete alternatives in EASA land, things will stay as they are longer than what some may expect
Ibra wrote:
EU states
That alone nullifies the argument. The members of the EU are not “states” within a country but they are at least on paper independent NATIONS which are bound under a contract to act under common law. This nonwithstanding some wet dreams of Mrs Merkel, Mr Junker and some others who think they own the place. And the FAA is clear on this. You may fly an N-reg with a compatible ICAO license inside the country which has issued the license, nowhere else. If you want to do that, you need an FAA license. Period.
ICAO is mostly a figurehead and has always been so. Obviously the very thought of ICAO has kept most member states from going totally bananas on certain issues such as overflight and landing rights but other than that, ICAO has no real power over anyone. Otherwise the whole discussion would be mute since forever, as in principle the whole banter about national validations should not even exist if ICAO was anything worth considering. The very idea of ICAO is to standardize aviation and licensing is one part of it and the higher point behind that was at some day to keep nations from screwing each other over with protectionist measures. In fact today, ICAO has no juristiction per se over it’s members which can be used to any useful degree, otherwise we would not have the FAA and EASA at each others throat and the Chinese and Russians cooking their own soups when it comes to aviation regulation. Obviously the USA and FAA do think they for all practical purposes have taken the place of ICAO in most parts of the world where a FAA license or certification is worth as much as the national one and that lead Europeans to conceive EASA in order to have their own rule set to stop American influence. The Russians and Chinese have never really let the FAA to have any say in their internal aviation laws anyhow.
So ICAO is a nice debating platform without any real power, not unlike the UN itself which has shown itself to be totally impotent when it comes to stopping nations doing things against it’s charter.
And as can be seen, even EASA has often enough no real control over their CAA’s even though that was the whole idea. And unfortunately, EASA is mostly blocked with any progressive thought by the European Commission, who simply ignore or hamper or delay whatever they find not up to their liking. Therefore the “competent” authorities often enough simply do what they want. Why otherwise should we have such massive internal differences within the EASA states?
In the days of increasing nationalism and separatism ICAO as well as any multinational contracts are more and more no longer worth the paper the contract has been written on and will be exploited by the interest groups as it serves their purposes. While there have been some cases where EASA stopped national CAA’s lying to their customers about EASA being responsible for their own gold plated ideas, the crisis EASA is in themselfs due to the blockade politics the European Comission exercises against them prevents them from becoming a real threat to those little kings on their national CAA thrones.
In the end despite all the talk of globalisation, the opposite seems to happen on a number of issues, countries want their control back over just about everything. So my expectation is that the future will see a dissolving of mutual reckognition of just about anything and more and more national regulation. Those who believe they can dodge national or regional regulation by trying to follow the laws of another country will find increasing opposition. It would only be logical if EASA puts an end to the N-Reg charade as much as the US would not dream to allow their citizens to operate foreign registered airplanes indefinitly on their territory with the sole purpose of avoiding US law. There is no reason why Europe should allow it’s citizens to do something the country of registry they all flock to does not allow the same.
If you dont have a license then it is difficult to argue that an accident isnt the result of a raft of possible errors, but if you dont carry out the stated poh checks it is equally impossible to argue that a mid air could have been avoided, while arguable perhaps a lot of other things might have been avoided.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
And the FAA is clear on this. You may fly an N-reg with a compatible ICAO license inside the country which has issued the license , nowhere else . If you want to do that, you need an FAA license. Period.
I don’t think there is anything explicit in the rules that says that, there are federal council interpretations and opinions but they contradict each other so much that I got myself a 61.75 to be on the safest side.
ICAO annex I now recognize “Regional Safety Oversight Organizations (RSOOs) agreements”, so it is something that will cascade into FARs, Part-FCLs with time (but tbh it will take someone less time to get an PPL in each country…)
Ibra wrote:
I don’t think there is anything explicit in the rules that says that, there are federal council interpretations and opinions but they contradict each other so much that I got myself a 61.75 to be on the safest side.
The explicit rule has been repeatedly cited here. It is in 14 CFR 61.3. There is no contradiction in Chief Counsel opinions on the rule to date.
See for example the opinion to Michael Graziano of 16 May 2014 from Mark W Bury as Assistant Chief Counsel for International Law, Legislation, and Regulations.
The US restricted foreign-based private pilot certificate issued in pursuance of 14 CFR 61.75 is a house of cards. Anyone serious about operating US-registered civil aircraft outside the US would be wise acquiring a standard airman certificate either directly or by first acquiring a Canadian licence and thereafter converting it.
The recent amendment to ICAO Annex 1 has absolutely no bearing on 14 CFR 61.3 vis-a-vis the operation of US-registered aircraft outside the US using non-US flight crew licences.
