NPPL is a pure British phenomenon also I understand, so it also involves a very tight diagram of pilots.
Not sure but probably 2k UK pilots are on the NPPL.
What one has to remember is that a lot of these people would not be flying at all in any other country in Europe, yet medical incapacitation is a negligible factor in GA…
What is tight is the overlap between the two… most planes that are any good but can fly freely around Europe, are “EASA planes”.
Is it a definition that only EASA aircraft can fly freely around EASAland?
ie. Aircraft which EASA has accepted – all certified aircraft, less those who have no longer a certificate holder.
Annex 1 (formerly Annex 2) aircraft can only fly in airspace where they are permitted. For my DR1050, I think that is France and Ireland on a Permit. Anywhere else I’d have to check.
A UK CAA Permit aircraft is still non-EASA.
I still find the situation confusing. A UK PPL was ICAO standard, but is now restricted to UK airspace. An FAA 61.75 requires an EASA PPL.
I think “EASA aircraft” is not clearly defined – see here. The opposite (non EASA aircraft) is clearly defined in some cases e.g. Annex 2 are never “EASA aircraft”, so maybe one could define it in terms of a list of exclusions.
The UK national PPL is an ICAO PPL and is valid worldwide – except (AIUI) in EASA-land (basically, the EU plus possibly Switzerland and Norway) where an EASA PPL is required for EASA aircraft. Your UK national PPL is perfectly valid in the USA, Australia, etc. It is only the EU which, via EASA which is an EU agency, and via directives which bind EU member countries, can render an ICAO license worthless within the EU.
This topic is related to this. It is something most people don’t want to talk about because they don’t want to draw attention. But it is a very big topic in GA.
It would surprise me if the FAA 61.75 PPL required an EASA PPL. The FAA will issue a 61.75 on any ICAO PPL.
Peter, my original German PPL (PPL-A) was ICAO as well, and my 61.75 ticket was based on it. But after the introduction of Part-FCL they were declared to be non-ICAO, unless you did a checkride (and I missed the deadline). The checkride was deemed necessary since with only the PPL-A you were not allowed into airspace C, you needed an extra 10hrs CVFR-training. A joke….with a glider you could go into C, since that CVFR"rating" didn´t exist for glider licenses.
However, the point is that my piggyback-license was not valid anymore since the underlying license number had changed. Subsequently I found out that at least the German NON-EASA PPLs are not enough for a 61.75 PPL now. But as FAA is very liberal and recognizes training and flight experience abroad very easily I took the written, a couple of hours training for familiarization and did the checkride for the standalone certificate.
Interesting. I wonder why Germany went to the specific step of declaring their own paper as substandard?
Germany has a tradition of never expiring documents. My father’s driver license is over 50 years old and still current, I also have the one I got at age 18. To get rid of the backlog of licenses (declaring them invalid was against the law), LBA went the way of limiting the old license with a simple transition to the new.
achimha wrote:
Germany has a tradition of never expiring documents
It’s the same in Norway. My wife still has her original driving license she got when turning 18. She is now my age 
and has a different name, and of course does not look 18 anymore (I sometimes joke about it. It’s not her face, it’s not her name, how could it be her license ) My old Norwegian PPL is also “valid”, but my ratings on it are not, hence it is pretty useless today. The basic principle is that you are given a “right” or earned a “right”, and no one can take that “right” away from you again. With PPL’s this is simply fixed with a transfer of rights to the new licenses (but the way it was done, was messy, and I doubt it was 100% within the law). It’s a fundamental thing in the law. EASA/EU is much more sloppy with these things though, which actually is very questionable regarding basic principles of freedom. We are to a lesser degree protected by actual law, and more subject to regulations that the authorities can change in a whim.
