Originally Posted by
olster
I believe the dreadful Shapps has his greasy hands all over this.
I suggest the blame lies more with No.10 and the ERG than with the DfT, which did lobby its political masters for retained EASA membership but were told to toe the party line. Shapps could of course have stood by his principles and quit, rather than standing on them to raise his Cabinet profile, but that's modern British politics for you.
I foresee little chance of a bilateral aviation licensing agreement in the near future. EASA will need the nod of its member states to allow the UK to establish bilateral agreements with it, and, quite reasonably, schadenfreude continues to be a strong leitmotif in a post-Brexit continental Europe. 'Post-Brexit' is a misnomer for the UK though, as there's nothing 'post' about it. We've got years of 'Brexit-Limbo' ahead of us and bilaterals, I fear, are but a distant dream.