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Corona / Covid-19 virus - airport and flying restrictions, and licensing / medical issues

*FAA Testing Centre in London *
It is only because of the Corona Crisis that the US AOPA has released the following:

I thought that there were NO FAA Testings Centres in the U.K.

Rochester, UK, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Not easy to google translate because they are PDFs.

Google Translate does PDFs, as simple as drag and drop (choose the Documents tab in translate). Most PDFs are not images, the text can be trivially extracted as utf-8.

Andreas IOM

Peter_G wrote:

I thought that there were NO FAA Testings Centres in the U.K.

I think they do all sort of tests, not only for the FAA.

Peter wrote:

Germany has announced various extensions – here. Not easy to google translate because they are PDFs.

Thank you Peter. The “licensing” part of the text says that all LBA issued licenses (the LBA does not issue PPLs, but PPL IR and above) which would expire until the end of July are extended for 4 months. This includes medicals, FI and FE ratings and class ratings. Even AME licenses.

For PPLs and LAPL, the individual federal states of Germany are responsible.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

I thought that there were NO FAA Testings Centres in the U.K.

Correct – no more FAA writtens in the UK or anywhere else in Europe AFAIK.

For PPLs and LAPL, the individual federal states of Germany are responsible.

It would be really interesting what Germany does for PPLs because I am sure other CAAs are watching it. Maybe the FAA too because thee are huge numbers of pilots around the world who need FAA medicals. The BFR is a 1:1 flight and generally easier to arrange. The FAA IR runs on the 6/6 rolling currency and I’ve been busy as hell flying approaches lately in anticipation of this.

This has just been posted by one airfield:

This sounds reasonable. At last somebody is being sensible. Avoiding contact is very easy for a solo flying owner. However I would not fly a rental or syndicate plane which has been flown within the last few days because one cannot practically disinfect it.

The new UK restrictions are detailed around here and it doesn’t say anything about airfields, other than indirectly about not allowing non essential travel, so while this is not being defined, it makes it probably hard to justify driving to the airfield.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

it makes it probably hard to justify driving to the airfield.

But surely the flight itself is non essential travel, let alone the trip to the airfield.

Egnm, United Kingdom

But surely the flight itself is non essential travel, let alone the trip to the airfield.

This debate, as carried out currently on the various social media sites, precisely mirrors the debate which went on in the ski business in the weeks before the resorts shut down totally by stopping the lifts running

I didn’t think it was smart for people to desperately try to get in there, somewhere, anywhere at all, while they can, because they were obviously going to spread the virus. For most, the whole social scene is integral. It is possible to do it in a relatively isolated manner but it isn’t gonna happen. And they did go, in their hundreds of thousands, very effectively, sooo obviously seeding much of Europe with it. And Europe mismanaged it horribly by just letting them all return and go straight back to work.

Setting aside current and variously sanctimonious posturing on social media there appear to be two ways to argue this one

  • if the intention of the restrictions is to not spread the virus (which IMHO it should be) then flying solo is fine provided that you can travel to the plane without making contact with others
  • any travel carries a risk of ending up in hospital and then you are taking up hospital resources, so everybody should stay at home

The main problem with the former is that the general public gets p1ssed off seeing planes flying around while they are not allowed to go down the pub. 99.9% of the public, and an amazing % of pilots, will never get the fact that it is actually possible to do this completely safely from the virus spreading POV. Other issues include e.g. airfield staffing which also needs to be done with the require spacing and in some cases this is difficult, especially if the cafe is shut (by law now) and the airfield is not making much money, whereas if they just close up and send staff home they get 80% of their staff costs paid by the taxpayer.

The latter is pretty stretched because most people don’t crash, and those that do quite often kill themselves so they are not a drain on the health service.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The main problem with the former is that the general public gets p1ssed off seeing planes flying around while they are not allowed to go down the pub. 99.9% of the public, and an amazing % of pilots, will never get the fact that it is actually possible to do this completely safely from the virus spreading POV.

I completely agree.

EDMB, Germany

Same here. I posted a comment on a famous french pilot site and got bashed with arguments like « it’s forbidden ». I wish most people were citizens with a brain, and not just sheeps.
I am worried about our freedom in the future. I note that the media defend the use of big brother tech to follow people and enforce the lock down.

LFOU, France

Peter wrote:

if the intention of the restrictions is to not spread the virus (which IMHO it should be) then flying solo is fine provided that you can travel to the plane without making contact with others

An alternative is that we don’t know enough, or it is not our normal routine to carry out many things in a safe manner to accommodate the new risk. There are many things that are potentially dangerous, being in hospital and flying are two… Staff working in an infectuous disease ward will be well practised in appropriate protocols. Pilots should be acutely aware of that thing could gravity.

My point is that at some point we are going need to find away to carry on with LIFE. Perhaps all aviators will need to start wearing white scarves, and flying googles, to mitigate any risks of infection :-)

There seems to a message that if we all just wash our hands and sit on the sofa, everything will return to normal in a few weeks, and that doesn’t make any sense to me. It is this over reach by authorities with no honest exit plan that annoys me.

Last Edited by Ted at 24 Mar 12:24
Ted
United Kingdom
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