I know Germany (D-reg) does. You cannot fly IFR unless you have this certificate.
I mean annual – not on the initial CofA which is pretty standard, per ICAO.
I think (although not 100% sure) that Spain has a similar requirement.
Surely, they now all come under the same EASA requiremnet which overides any previous National requirements.
Switzerland. It is part of the Airworthiness Certificate, where the operating class of the aircraft is displayed. VFR day, VFR night, IFR CAT I e.t.c.
This doc has to be renewed on an annual basis.
Don,t tell the UK CAA….another potential revenue stream.Is this mandated in EASA or an example of other states keeping national peculiarities against the spirit of EASA..VBR Stampe.
The Irish have a special certificate for Irish Mist; to qualify you have to have experience of 12 bottles in the preceeding 12 months!
The minimum requirement for IFR in the UK is so slight that it wouldn’t matter.
Another big advantage of the no plan/no clearance/no radio/no minima/Class G IFR culture we have here.
I think an “IFR certificate” type of scam, in the UK – unless it was a triviality – would just drive everybody to N-reg.
Well, the minority of the IFR community that isn’t N-reg already 
I think the German situation (not sure about the Swiss one) “slots in” nicely with their ban on IFR in Class G, i.e. a ban on “uncontrolled IFR”. (Same as the UK IMCR slots in nicely with its ban on Class A, without which it would be a full IR, just about).
Obviously, if Germany allowed IFR in Class G, their IFR Cert would become a bit silly because the only people who would pay for it would be those wishing to file Eurocontrol IFR flight plans, and German airspace has enough Class E high enough to not need Eurocontrol IFR to get around usefully. So mostly only pilots wishing to fly IFR outside of Germany would bother with it.
The fact that Germany feels able to run this in the face of EASA is both interesting and disturbing. It is also a crude gold plating of ICAO certification, where IFR capability on the Type Certificate, plus carrying the equipment required by each airspace is, ahem, compliant…
The way the UK works is that the CAA spends a lot of its time finding ways to raise money, but they tend to (a) increase charges for existing stuff and (b) create chargeable opportunities where an EASA change might remove some of their income (an example of that is the mandatory briefing for a non UK IR examiner – that option must be a real concern for the CAA and the UK FTO industry). But they rarely come up with some completely arbitrary scam to make money on.
Just give provide an example of a german “avionics check report” that contains the famous VFR/IFR distinction, here
is one.
In typical german fashion, it goes into all possible detail of the status of the avionics equipment aboard the aircraft.
On IFR aircraft, this has to done every year and includes an electronic check of every single piece of electronic equipment, and verification that all that is fully compliant with all german regulations. As I said, typical german. They make quite a bit of science of that. As far as I know, doing all that this piece of paper entails, costs in the order of 1000€ per year. Compare this with roughly 300€ every second year for N-reg. aircraft…
One thing I notice about that is all the serial numbers. Do they extract the instruments to read those off, every year? If so, that is completely mad.
And if they don’t pull everything out (I can see having to disconnect some air pipework to access the S/N on some air instruments) how is the €1000 justified?
I am suprised that German IR pilots don’t get together and jointly finance a legal challenge to this. €1000 is a lot of money.
What I find bizzare is why doesn’t the whole German IR community doesn’t just go N-reg en-masse.
Maybe there are social reasons. I know one German pilot who bought an N-reg TB20 and moved it to D-reg. I asked him Why on earth would he do that. He said that people who know him would say he was fiddling his taxes if he was N-reg; there is a stigma attached to it. Is that true in Germany?
