JAA Training in the US -- howto for an FTO?

[FlyCorona]

Hello All,

I recently acquired a flight school in the Los Angeles basin, and have been searching for viewpoints on "good" and "bad" Flight Schools (FTOs in the UK parlance ;) ) -- there is a wealth of information here, and I thank you all (and the mods) for the insight provided.

I see much mention of the JAA licensing, which some of you are acquiring in the US to save funds. Is it difficult for a US FTO to provide training sufficient for JAA licensing? I see mention of "JAA standards" -- is there a JAA equivelant to the FAR/AIM where I could read more on the topic?

I would love to hear horror stories and ideas on US training in general, and JAA training specifically as well -- while we probably wouldn't have our act together for this for a year or so, it's something that might be fun to pursue if we can add value to the process. We have a lot of euro-area pilots come to us for time-building (we're supposedly the cheapest in the LA area), but none, unsurprisingly, seem to know the particulars about the actual licensing issues we would face.

Regards,

- Mike
General Manager
Fly Corona!

[OneIn60rule]

I have limited information on this matter and what I do have could be somewhat inaccurate.

Firstly I believe there is something called the LASORS which I would guess is the equivelant of the FAR/AIM.

What is going to be somewhat problematic for your school is that students who want to do the CPL JAA will actually need to pass the 14 ATPL exams first and that can take anywhere from 6 months (someone did it in 3 months!) up to a year and a half (the maximum time frame is 18 months from the first taken exam).

There are loop holes, you can commence training for the CPL but you CANNOT take the exam until you have passed all 14 exams.

Please understand that these exams are NOT something you would compare to the GLEIM tests. You are not given any information as to how questions are worded or what the answers will be like. Hence these tests take ages to complete.
For a certain school this was a HUGE penalty due to the fact that they expected students to be flying while studying since they are staying in the USA on a US visa and the school has to prove that these students are actually doing some flying/studying preferrably flying of course.


That is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome. The other is to make yourself as lucrative as possible when it comes to build the 100 hours required for the CPL test WHICH by the way works DIFFERENTLY from the FAA side of things.
For example in the FAA as you know you are allowed to use the PIC time from your IR to count towards the PIC time needed for CPL FAA. For the JAA CPL though these hours are completely invalid exept that you will get credit for the DUAL hours received on your IR. That's another thing that could catch potential customers off guard.


In order to realize this dream, bear in mind that you'd need to get a partner that is APPROVED for JAA training, which means they'd need an CHIEF flight instructor JAA qualified with NO restrictions (not talking about medical here) as well as JAA instructors (they can be restricted and still offer JAA PPL's).



That's all I have for you at this moment.

Keygrip will probably come along shortly to give you some more ideas on this.

Cheers and good luck to your company!

[Keygrip]

I already tried to - Mike - check your "Personal messages".