Originally Posted by
Jhieminga
This may be a strange idea, but the origin of the refusal is the FAA's stance on the SOLI'd licence. Why not communicate with them about this? Perhaps you could convince the Austrian authorities to issue some kind of statement regarding your licence to support the fact that it is a fully-standalone licence and not dependant on another country's paperwork. I know it is easier said than done, but if you can convince the FAA that your paperwork is in order, that would be the shortest route to a resolution. I'm not saying easiest... just shortest.
FAA §61.75(f) states:
The goal here would be to convince them that there is only one licence involved. You could also try to find or obtain some kind of letter or statement from the UK CAA saying that they have transferred everything to Austria and therefore there is not UK licence involved in this situation.
Yes thank you, agree and will probably be the route I am taking. I had hoped that someone in this forum might have already encountered the issue and had any advice to offer (e.g. a "friendly" contact point at the FAA who would be open to such an attempt).
I can see how the FAA wants to avoid piggy back licences on the basis of piggy back licences (hence their stance on this in general) but guess the SOLI is something different conceptually so there is a case to make for it.
The same issue by the way seems to apply to the at least on paper attractive licence conversion opportunities offered by the new EASA/FAA BASA, which also don't seem to be open to SOLIs under similar rules, so suspect quite a lot of people will be affected by this over time. It is interesting/frustrating to see that EASA seems to have not pushed for a provision to address this very matter in the BASA.