PPL Licence Validation

[stuharri2002]

Hi,
Wonder if anyone can help:
I have recently got my PPL, can someone give me the heads up as to the requirements for keeping it valid. I know you have to do 12 hours a year but how many have to be P1 and do you have to have a test every year?

cheers

stu

[BEagle]

Congratulations on obtaining your PPL!

This is a licence which contains (probably) a Single Engine Piston (Land) Class Rating.

The Rating validity may be maintained either by 'experience' or by 'test'. To maintain it by 'experience', in the SECOND 12 month period, you need to fly 12 hours TT, of which 6 must be as Pilot-in-Command, plus 12 take-offs and landings. The 12 hours must also include a 1 hour training flight with an authorised instructor - this is NOT a test! As soon as you've done all this, your Rating may be re-validated by an authorised Examiner who will sign your licence Certificate of Revalidation page - no fee involved.

Alternatively, you may revalidate by 'test'. This means flying a simple Proficiency Check with an Examiner in the last 3 months of your Rating validity period - about an hour with a mandatory test content.

But remember that, notwithstanding the Rating validation requirements, if you want to carry passengers then you must have flown 3 take-offs and landings as 'sole manipulator of the controls' in a/c of the same 'class' in the previous 90 days.

In addition, the licence itself must be re-issued every 5 years; for this you must complete the relevant form and send off the appropriate documents to the CAA, together with the re-issue fee.

Really, all this should have been covered in your Air Law ground training. You can also find it all in LASORS, downloadable for free from the CAA website.

[stuharri2002]

Thanks for the reply, yes i did know most of that, all i was unsure of was when the 12TT was needed - in the first or second twelve month period.

cheers

stu

[EGCC4284]

BEagle or anyone else who can answer.

I found out the hard way with reference to the 5 years bit and had to travel to Gatwick last week to revalidate my JAA PPL.

It had expired in January 2005

My RT licence had also expired as that was only valid for 5 years as well. My new RT is valid for another 10 years now.

I have one question that I am trying to get an answer to.

Is an old (pre April 1999) CAA PPL valid for life or is the also a life period on these licences too???

[BEagle]

The licence validity period of pre-JAR-FCL PPLs is stated within the licence. Most are probably valid 'for the holder's lifetime' - except that the Ratings must be maintained as for a JAR-FCL licence.

So - maintaining validity is the same. However, the big difference is that you don't have to pay for the nonsensical 5-yearly re-issue fee in the same way as you do for a Eurocratic JAR-FCL PPL.

I tried to tell the DfT that this was unreasonable and would be expensive; however, they prefered to believe the CAA's blatantly dishonest Regulatory Impact Assessemnt which claimed that the JAR-FCL PPL(A) would be no more expensive to maintain than the old UK PPL(A) had been. An outrageous lie.....

If you have a UK PPL(A), you do not have to convert it to JAR-FCL PPL(A), nor should you EVER consider doing so!