Originally Posted by
Whopity
I think you have answered your own question. You must be in posession of a licence in order to exercise the privileges, a copy is of no use whatsoever. Your new licence will not be valid until you have signed it. I suggest you wait until the holiday is over then courier the old licence back so that you can minimise the time when you don't have a valid licence.
In any event the exemption only applies to licences if issued between 1 January 2021 and 31 March 2021, so you don't want the IAA licence to turn up in December.
CAP2017 is the general validation for EASA licences issues before the end of 2020, they will be allowed to fly G-Reg outside of the UK for 2 years. ORS4 1543 only allows those licences that were SOLi'd and issued between Jan and Mar 2021 to fly to the end of 2021. So if you can get it issued before the end of the year could be better, although unlikely that will happen.