guys its not only faa licence that is easy to get.easa licence can also be get easily but u have to go to spain they too have question displayed on there site and u can easily cram those question and answer and give exam and u will surely get your easa licence.this is really bad for easa reputation but this is reality guys.
I did my A & P's at the American Airman School at the Francis.S.Gabreski Airport on Long Island,NY as well circa 1998.
It was certainly not a school,but a facility for getting your A & P's quickly.May have changed now,can only hope so
My advice to you is read all the theory books before you get there and you should be able to do all the theory exams in the one day.Then spend the next day doing the practical & oral prep,and then on the third day actually do your prac with the examiner.If you work on heavy jets currently,expect a rough time,but I am sure you will pass without too much hestitation.The bloke is a first rate kn0b,but just remember what you are there for.
A & Ps are really quite easy compared to most other exams I have done.And if I can pass them,then 99% of the industry can too.
I did mine about 8 years ago and it took me 5 days in an A&P school in Dallas, Texas (Not ACME, the school I went to was quite small and AFAIK the owner closed it a few years ago after he retired). The reason was that I was (already a B1 at the time) working for a company, which had a maintenance contract for an American airline.
If you are not an American citizen or resident in the US, the biggest obstacle will be to provide a letter stating that you, as a foreigner, require an FAA licence to service N-registered aircraft. This letter has to come from the operator or the maintenance company and it is even better if it states that there is no American citizen available to do the job. Fortunately I got one from the wellknown American freight airline, which was accepted by the FAA field rep during the preliminary interview (which was also used to check my ability to speak, read and write English).
Last edited by MD11Engineer : 18th April 2009 at 19:45.
You don't actually need to be able to speak English to hold an A+P
Foreign applicants who don't speak English can be issued with an A+P which is endorsed with "valid only outside the USA", I'm not sure how they test them though. When I did mine tow guys in the group in front of me failed the oral practical because they spoke very slowly heavily accented English which did not fit in well with the examiners 'machine gun pace' question and answer style. The school simply 'repackaged them' and sent them to a different DME where they passed......
Im not a engineer so could not comment on the technical issues but i do know as someone in the recruitment game that holders of UK and Australian issued engineer licences appear to be held in the highest regard world wide, whilst the A@P certificate is regarded as something of a joke, whether this justified or not i wouldnt like to say but that is how it is.
Im not a engineer so could not comment on the technical issues but i do know as someone in the recruitment game that holders of UK and Australian issued engineer licences appear to be held in the highest regard world wide, whilst the A@P certificate is regarded as something of a joke, whether this justified or not i wouldnt like to say but that is how it is.
Yet mechanics with A/P in the USA work on more aircrafts in a day than mechanics in the whole of europe plus Australia combined. Not to mention that these same A/P mechanics are the one who work the assembly lines at Boeing, Cessna, beechcraft, lockheed ...ect.
I work as a mechanic for an airline in the US that has more flights and more planes than BA and Qantas combined and we operate boeing, MD Douglas, Airbus, Canadair and Embraer jets and yet me and my coworkers do a pretty good job at keeping our planes safely in the air.
You see, you people with your B1 and B2 can call A/P and A/P license holders any kind of names you want however I know one thing, when it comes to aircraft maintenance I'm has good has anybody else anywhere in world.
Anyway I'm tired now, I just finished return to service an airplane that just Took off for 15 hour flight to the middle east with about 245 souls on board. Not bad for somebody who has a license that some of you call a joke.
so at last i got to know that it doesnt matters how much maintenance experience u r having but till your company dont have N register aircraft u cant appear for a+p .well its not with easa licence which is good thing.and guys just want to know that in usa its a and p and in europe its easa and in asia its icao then which one in africa and antartica?
so at last i got to know that it doesnt matters how much maintenance experience u r having but till your company dont have N register aircraft u cant appear for a+p .well its not with easa licence which is good thing.and guys just want to know that in usa its a and p and in europe its easa and in asia its icao then which one in africa and antartica?
Well, IMO, the A&P licence doesn't go as much in depth as the EASA (or even more the CAA, LBA or IAA, which I had before the EASA licence, licence), but is spread out more.
E.g. while the European licences are pretty restricted to aircraft categories, but demand a large amount of knowledge within this category, the A&P system demands a lot, but not very deep knowledge about the whole range, e.g. I had to learn stuff all the way from wooden, fabric covered glider repair, via WW2 era piston engines and props, helicopters to turbine engines and heavy jets, plus avionics (no seperation between A&C and X, or B1 and B2 licence in their system).
The European system is more specialised, but demands more knowledge within the speciality.
From my experience, the Irish IAA exams (which are based on the British CAA system) were much harder than the A&P exams. The written exams were essay type exams, lasting about 2 hours for each category (airframe, gas turbine engines, electrics, general and air legislation), with typical questions like: "Describe in detail (with drawings, if necessary) the lubrication system of a turbine engine of your choice" or "Explain in detail the internal workings of a static inverter unit". Also, the Irish disn't publish exam questions.
Then, after you have passed the written exam for a category, you were invited to the IAA headquarters in Dublin and grilled for one hour by two examiners during an oral exam. They had the written results in front of them and were poking for weak areas in your knowledge. These exams definitely left youi feel wrung out and covered in sweat.
The multiple choice A&P was much easier for me (I don't know about the EASA exams, never did any of them, since I had my old Irish licence grandfathered into a B1 licence).
The practical exam for the A&P was a joke, ok, I already had years of aircraft experience behind me at this time (though most of uit on heavy metal) and a German apprenticeship is quite thorough on hands on experience and workmanship as well.
Concerning the A&P oral exam, I thought it would never end. Later I discovered that the lady examiner read the whole list of questions to me, but the questions themselves were pretty easy and could be easily solved with a bit of common sense.
I certainly wasnt implying A and p holders are any less able than anyone else, im only saying that it isnt generally held in high regard as a qualification where as some other licences are, for eg UK and AUS issued licences
The problem as I see it is the syllabus is too wide. It covers everything from fabric repairs to jet engines, helicopters, weight and balance, sheet metal, wooden props, electrics and electronics. Because the syllabus is so wide, it doesn't really go into any depth. The FAA want you to know a little bit about a lot of things whereas here in Europe we tend to specialise, B1 or B2, rotor craft or fixed wing, large A/C or small A/C etc so our exams tend to go into far more depth.
The DME that examined me told me he'd never worked on large transport aircraft and specialised in light A/C and helicopters so my experience meant nothing to him. I've never worked on anything other than large transport A/C (B2 only) so his experience meant little to me.
My job on the day was to convince him that he could trust me to work in "his world", I managed to do that easily but in truth I wouldn't trust myself to work in his world. I wanted the A+P to enable me to certify the same large jets as I do with my EU licences. If there was a way to hold an A+P for this category of A/C without having to go through the charade of pretending I was competent in repairing wooden spars or stitching canvas wings I would have done that instead. Now as it stands the FAA think me and thousands like me are competent enough to hold an A+P and exercise the privelges that come with it, who am I to argue with them......?
Two different philosophies regarding certification. FAA is intentionally broad and relies on industry for weeding out those not capable, the methodology is efficient and effective. The dispatch reliability and safety records of carriers maintained by those with "highly regarded" maintenance certifications are no better than those maintained by FAA certificated mechanics.
What’s with the evasive answer? I asked a simple question, “Do you want to back that up with numbers?” you say, “absolutely, prove me wrong.”
So where are your numbers, come on how can I prove you wrong if you’re not going to justify your big bold claim?
Tell you what lets keep things fair I’ll go first:
You said: “[The] safety records of carriers maintained by those with "highly regarded" maintenance certifications are no better than those maintained by FAA certificated mechanics. ”
I said, as stated above:
“Do you want to back that up with numbers?”
You said, well we’ve been through that, you didn’t…
Iata say: “North Asia had a perfect record of zero hull losses in 2008. North America (0.58), Europe (0.42) and Asia / Pacific (0.58) all performed better than the global average.” http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/2009-02-19-01.htm
…and Flight Global they say, in response to your comment, “maintenance certifications are no better than those maintained by FAA certificated mechanics.” say:
“US FAA fines Southwest $10.2 million for missing fleet inspections Southwest Airlines grounded nearly 7% of its Boeing 737 fleet in mid-March after the FAA proposed a record $10.2 million fine for missed fleet inspections and after a congressman charged that the carrier's "cosy" relationships with FAA on-site inspectors had endangered safety. For an airline that wins award after award as an admired company, and as the US carrier that carried the most domestic passengers in 2007 - 101.9 million - the possible erosion of its reputation presents a serious challenge”
I particularly like the comment made by Garry Kelly, Southwest Airlines Chief Executive: "We have safely transported the population of the United States four and a half times" great comment to put at the end of an article where his airline has ignored mandatory inspections on 7% of it’s fleet… can you help with the numbers there? How many people did that endanger?
So 306252710 x 4.5= 1,278,137,195 people flown, 7% of fleet missed mandatory inspections = 96,469,603.65 people flown on aircraft with missed mandatory checks, do you thing Garry Kelly uses the same smiley as you when he talks about safety?
Ok I’m being mean you can have your statement “maintenance certifications are no better than those maintained by FAA certificated mechanics.” in Europe were not as good as you guys in the states, and lest not forget while “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” the Southwest incident didn’t do any good for the aviation industry in the Sates or anywhere for that matter!
Nice try Miles, typical faulty logic. I do hope your aircraft troubleshooting skills don't follow similar logic. Please tell me how hull loss statistics have anything to do with maintenance quality, or dispatch reliability? Tell me how many of those hull losses counted by IATA were lost due to poor maintenance?
How does Southwest being fined by the FAA have anything to do with A&P certification being "easy".
"Our tests are harder than yours, therefore we are better" Yeah, right.
Same logic is, "our country is so much older than yours, therefore we are better"
Non compliance with mandatory inspections were management decisions. It has absolutely nothing to do with mechanic licensing being easy, lax, etc.
Chill out dude no one saying that anyones any better than any else, the fact is compared to some licences the A&P is very easy to obtain it requires no where near the same level of knowledge or effort than say obtaining BCAR licence required and thats a fact, end of story really as for europe being better, of course were better no sane person could argue otherwise
Cummon guys, Chill out......the poor guy only wanted to know how and where to get his A & P......instead of helping him out or guiding him.....everyone seems to enter the forum with blazing guns everywhere!!! . Nobody is better or worse, its all down to certifying individuals....I have seen so many penpushers having Licenses...both from FAA & EASA(JAR). so its NOT down to standards of any country or their authority but rather its the person and how they do their job!!! We can go on and on and on needlessly arguing about who and what is better!!!!
. Nobody is better or worse, its all down to certifying individuals....I have seen so many penpushers having Licenses...both from FAA & EASA(JAR). so its NOT down to standards of any country or their authority but rather its the person and how they do their job!!! We can go on and on and on needlessly arguing about who and what is better!!!!
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