Hello to all, those who may not have known my story a few months ago, I WAS a PPL student but sadly lost my class 2 medical due to type 1 diabetes. I am now on the NPPL route and have solo flying rights but cannot carry passengers due to a restriction upon it. However I was informed by the AOPA/NNPL medical advisor that in the USA diabetics like myself are permitted to carry passengers...

this is what I really want, to be able to share the expereience with my friends and oh girlfriend ;):cool: without having to book a 4 seater and instructor!!

So from what I have roughly realised but I need confirmation of this/guidance from you guys, is it possible to fly a N reg or G reg aircraft here in the UK, carrying passengers using an FAA license?

Please help shed some light upon this\2

Many Thnaks

You cannot get a FAA PPL on the back of your NPPL, but you could go to the US and train for a standalone FAA PPL. I don't know what training hours, if any, you could offset against the PPL. The FAA are very keen to have all the training signed off by the instructor as you go along, which I don't suppose you have.
Worst case, you would get the PPL in the minimum hours but I don't know what this is and would be a serious undertaking. You could then fly a N reg in the UK with a current FAA medical.

Failing that you will have to wait to see if an EASA NPPL type license appears, potentially with different medical requirements.

as far as i'm aware you can only carry 10 hours over

You cannot get an FAA certificate based upon the NPPL as the NPPL is not ICAO complient.

The FAA will however recognise ALL you training hours towards total time. So long as you complete the REQUIRED FAA requirements with an FAA instructor (like dual cross country / night etc...) then you should be able to get an FAA certificate in a short time.

Don't know about the medical though. I'm sure you can get one, but whether you can use it in the UK I don't know. If you can then there is no reason for you not to fly G reg aeroplanes with passengers onboard.

So long as you complete the REQUIRED FAA requirements with an FAA instructor (like dual cross country / night etc...) then you should be able to get an FAA certificate in a short time.

You don't need to do any of the training with an FAA CFI.

All training towards the FAA PPL can be done with a plain ordinary JAA instructor in a G-reg. Or any other ICAO instructor in any ICAO reg.

Only the signoff saying that you are ready for the checkride must be done by an FAA CFI, and for obvious reasons you won't find an FAA CFI who will sign you off unless he has flown with you. The last 3 hours need to be within the last 60 days preceeding the checkride and usually these 3 hours are flown with the FAA CFI who is going to sign you off.

If doing this in a US school then the signoff will be done by the CFI(s) who you flew all the training with.

There is no need to get individual logbook entries signed off but obviously it looks better, and could help in the event of some uncertainty.

The very best thing is to make sure each logbook entry (done over here in a G-reg) explicitly states enough about the flight to make it obvious that it meets the FAA requirements; e.g. if you are doing your NQ then make sure you get a 100nm flight done and properly described as such, rather than the usual JAA practice where you just log PU/T time, the instructor's name appears as P1 and that's it.

I would go as far as saying to one's UK instructor, up front, that one day you want to do the FAA CPL/IR, get a copy of the FAR/AIM, and make sure that whenever a flight can be used to meet both JAA and FAA requirements then it is explicitly structured and logged as such. Obviously one still needs to meet the checkride standard on the day but the process of collecting the correct logbook entries has caused a lot of problems especially if the deficiency (like being 1 night landing short, or the night x/c is 10nm short of the minimum distance) is discovered too late.

An NPPL should be valid in an N-reg, BTW, in UK airspace, but this doesn't help in this case.

There has been some controversy over the FAA Class 3 medical (the Irish CAA has reportedly banned it for resident N-reg pilots in Ireland) but AFAIK it is ICAO compliant unless it has special conditions attached.

You don't need to do any of the training with an FAA CFI.
While this is true, I'd still tend to use one for the requirements to prevent any abiguity when it comes time to take the test especially for the initial PPL. Also if using a non-FAA CFI you better be pretty sure you know exactly what requirements you need to meet or you might get a nasty surprise when it comes to test time. Also an FAA CFI would NEED to sign solo rights in the USA if taking the test there, for a non ICAO PPL holder.

Actually the PPL requirements are not particularly onerous. If you already fly solo in the UK there is no reason they couldn't be completed in sub 10 hours or so.....(dunno what your level of experience is of course).

There are so many angles on this. I don't think it's even possible to do an ab initio FAA PPL in the UK, because the FAA student pilot certificate is not (AFAIK) valid outside the USA. So there is no way to do the solo bits, unless one already has another license valid for that plane.

The thing that catches out a lot of Brits doing the FAA PPL is the night flying. You can get the CAA/JAA NQ without meeting the FAA PPL night requirements.

i wonder, if a UK insurance company would place a restriction, given that, the CAA medical cannot be passed ? just a thought, might be worth exploring before spending any further cash

hardly irrelevant, if, he wishes to fly in the UK on an FAA licence,

This isn't looking good my tiny little loop hole of light is closing fast.:{