Hiring a PA28 in Edmonton, Canada on UK PPL?

[BritishPPL]

Hello all,

In the next month or so I am planning on making my first ever visit across the pond to see an old Uncle who lives close to Edmonton, Alberta in Canada.

As a UK PPL holder I thought about treating him to a pleasure flight over the local area.

1) Does anyone know any places to hire a PA28 in the Edmonton area?

2) Will my UK PPL be valid for solo hire in Canada after the usual (as if hiring in the UK) check ride or will I need to sit an exam and do other things?

Thanks in anticipation.

[DSoup]

Not 100% sure in the answer. But the Canadian Air regs provide a way to transfer licenses. I would assume you'd have to write the PSTAR, get your license converted and then you'd have to do a check ride for insurance reasons.

[derekl29]

I hired a PA28 in Toronto last year when I was on holiday over there using my UK PPL.

The paperwork process is quite simple, but has to be done before you leave the UK:

- you'll need to apply to Transport Canada for a Foreign Licence Validatation Certificate (FLVC) - search on the Transport Canada Website for the form.
- I found the quickest way was to email the completed form back to them along with copies of your licence and medical (and also the $45 fee paid by credit card)
- I got the FLVC back by email within 48 hours, the original took a few weeks to then arrive by post.

The certificate is then valid for a year and lets you exercise your normal PPL licence privileges (not IMC) on a Canadian registered aircraft.

The more tricky bit was choosing the flying school, the one I chose was confused about the validity of the FLVC at first (they'd never seen one before) until their CFO researched the rules and all was ok.

You`ll have to get a check flight of course, which I guess isnt a problem, but I was also asked to complete a written exam on the PA28 which was more tricky than any PPL exam I'd ever done (and not really relevant). The exam I gather was just specific to the hiring requirements of the place I hired from.

Consequentially, that whole process meant that it took a week before I finally got to solo hire the PA28, despite being very current on type. So I'd just check with the school that there are no onerous exams or other similar hoops to jump through.

The Canadian Airspace was fine, RT is a little different but easy to get used to.

Derek

[custardpsc]

Do have a look in the canada section or use search, I have posted the details on uk /canadian validation/short term options there a while back. Short answer is that it isnt hard but needs a visit or two to transport canada office.

[jack-daw]

"...but has to be done before you leave the UK:"

Since when? I have made two applications, in 2007 and 2008, for the 1-year licence and just walked in to a Transport Canada office with a filled in form (from their website), all my paperwork, and $45. Took about half an hour.