Originally Posted by
PT6Driver
My understanding is that the US medical relates to his US licence and the EASA medical to his EASA licence.
He could not operate the aircraft between EASA states on his US licence. Only by using the privileges of his EASA licence and medical could he operate an N registered aircraft between UK and France and the return.
Therefore in this instance his US licence and medical are irrelevant.
Surely isn’t it the other way around? To operate an N ref aircraft between the UK and France he would have to fly it on the privileges of his FAA licence. A UK issued EASA licence would only allow him to fly an N reg aircraft within the UK, not across any international boundaries...
The sad thing for Mr Ibbotson would seem to be that for all of his 3700 hours he didn’t have the experience to realise how difficult, or even impossible, it is to fly visually over water on a dark night under a cloud layer. There is almost no visual reference, and sadly from the report of the last few moments of the flight this crash almost certainly resulted from disorientation, the idea that anyone who was in control of the situation would be descending deliberately at 7000 feet per minute in that aircraft at that level is totally unbelievable. And the sad thing for those who want to believe that an experienced PPL holder with 3700 hours would be better than a newly qualified CPL / IR holder is that this proves quite clearly that it’s not the case. Your 250 hr CPL/IR holder could have got in a Malibu or an Arrow or a Seneca and operated that flight perfectly safely on an IFR flight plan, just the way they flew their IR flight test a few days or weeks before.