Originally Posted by
aterpster
Let's say I am an American Airline pilot based in Dallas. My U.S. ATP is valid for me to fly to any AAL station in the world (and authorized alternate), provided I have the requisite training from AAL.
Why should this situation be different?
It is of course, as the US is just one country, the EASA states are currently 28 different countries. As EU law in this case supersedes national law there is only one legal kind of license available, the EASA license. And that allows a pilot (or mechanic) licensed that way to operate on airplanes registered in any of those 28 states. When they UK leaves that union without a deal, they will also leave all over 700 treaties that binds the EU including the one on EASA and EASA licensing. Which means, that quite legally the current licenses won't be legal anymore (which is why the CAA prepares to re-issue them as UK ones), and of course holders of UK issued EASA licenses won't be able to work outside of the UK anymore except on UK aircraft as an outstation. As most larger EU low cost carriers are pan-european trans-national airlines that affects them quite a bit, after all in the EU it is possible to work everywhere in those 28 countries on any of their aircraft with the full rights of freedom. And as a consequence easyJet is in the process of splitting the airline into an EU part, a UK part and already has a Swiss part as switzerland follows most of the EU regulations (including membership in EASA), but is not a member of the EU.To prepare that they have so far transferred something over 100 aircraft to an EU registry (they did choose austria, as the regulator is a commercial company and very easy to work with depending on monetary commitments). Next will be pilots and maintenance is outsourced anyway to local providers that are already EU licensed. Interesting thing is, easyJet is by now the biggest Austrian airline, but has no base in Austria, just some office space.