My FAA licence only says “English Language Proficient”. No date. I don’t think that all the US airline pilots are quaking in their boots when flying into Europe, worried that a ramp-check will lead to instant imprisonment…
The ICAO regulations are here in Annex 1 to the Chicago Convention.
My FAA endorsement got rejected by LBA because it does not meet the requirements of Annex 1. Annex 1 defines 6 levels of English and requires regular re-testing for all levels below level 6. Therefore “English Language Proficient” cannot meet the requirements.
There’s logic to it although it’s stupid. It wouldn’t have taken the FAA and NATS a lot of effort to actually read the ICAO Convention and do it properly tough…
Done the test a while ago with this company
http://www.kesselbring.com/
My FAA licence only says “English Language Proficient”. No date. I don’t think that all the US airline pilots are quaking in their boots when flying into Europe, worried that a ramp-check will lead to instant imprisonment…
Mine was issued about a decade ago ago and doesn’t say anything about English language, but I believe demonstrating English language proficiency was required by FAA to pass my original private certificate check ride. I’m always pleased to see FAA following best leadership practice by doing things in a reasonable way, not emulating a circus act: that indicates some small fraction of my taxes is going to something worthwhile.
The FAA pilot certificate is actually only a certificate to prove that proficiency has been demonstrated one time – which is the US requirement to fly an aircraft. It is not a license and as such does not have a period of validity. I believe repetitive language testing and Federal licensing in that sense would likely be illegal in the US. The same legal logic makes an FAA BFR a training exercise, and therefore not subject to published pass/fail criteria. With that principle in mind, the logical approach under US law is for the FAA BFR to be conducted in English, if language proficiency is a area of potential concern, with the same no-pass/fail criteria as for the rest of the BFR scope 
The ICAO regulations are here in Annex 1 to the Chicago Convention.
Which say nowhere what has to be written on the licence.
My FAA endorsement got rejected by LBA because it does not meet the requirements of Annex 1. Annex 1 defines 6 levels of English and requires regular re-testing for all levels below level 6. Therefore “English Language Proficient” cannot meet the requirements.
That’s a different issue. They have to accept the FAA licence for flying FAA aircraft in Europe [for now….] including the endorsement for language proficiency; they do not have to accept another country’s language assessment to put it on their own licence.
Silvaire, all FAA licences issued since the introduction of the ELP requirement have that endorsement; I paid $2 to get mine reissued since it is technically required to fly in what Americans call “International”.
The FAA uses a different way of implementing the ICAO “recommendations” wrt. LPE.
Under the FAA system, you have to do an BFR every two years. Furthermore, the FAA also requires that any applicant for a licence speaks English – and they have been requiring this for decades.
As an ICAO LPE level 4 is valid for three years, the FAA has taken the practical approach that if you pass a BFR, then you are sufficiently well versed in speaking English that you qualify for, at least, a level 4. Which will have a longer shelf life than your BFR. So at the next BFR your implicit LPE 4 is automatically, implicitly extended.
So within the FAA system there has never been a need to formally annotate licences, issue paperwork, do exams and whatnot. Just passing your BFR implies that you have at least LPE 4. Which is the level that ICAO requires as a minimum.
In Europe, where speaking English is (was?) not required to hold a pilots licence, this scheme was not possible. So then-JAR-FCL had to make things explicit, with exams, paperwork and whatnot. The *AAs never realized how much was involved, and the *AAs were too busy anyway with the upcoming EASA transition, to implement this timely and properly. They also failed to communicate clearly with the pilot community about this in general, and for instance the CAA badly bungled the annotation on the licences (by not mentioning the level and expiration date). This led to the mess we are in now.
If you do an official LPE exam, it’s hard enough to get the results registered. But if you show up at the CAA, waiving your FAA licence, you can’t blame them for not honoring your English proficiency. They would have to dive deep into the FARs to conclude that you have an implicit ICAO level 4, and they’d have to check the date of your last BFR to verify that the implicit ICAO level 4 has not expired. Hard work, and nobody bothered to get that procedure into the FCL.800 Accepted Means of Compliance anyway. So it would actually not be legal for the CAA to issue you any kind of LPE based on your FAA licence.
(But here’s an idea: Can EU citizens submit AMCs themselves, or maybe via AOPA? If you can get an AMC into EASA Part-FCL.800 so that the CAA can issue you an LPE 4 on the basis of holding an FAA licence, which automatically expires on the date your BFR expires, then that would make things a lot easier for this group of pilots. And AFAIC it would meet ICAO requirements too. You just have to count on some paperwork (and maybe a fee payable to the CAA) to register your ICAO 4 every two years.)
I think the AMC idea is great, and perfectly reasonable. However I could imagine it might not ‘fly’ because by design you can’t officially fail an FAA BFR. As I understand it, the law dictates that an FAA pilot is only tested one time for proficiency against the applicable FAA Practical Test Standards, including English language proficiency.
(Unless he really screws up somehow and they make him do it again 
)
