Originally Posted by
richpea
But this policy isn't doing that. British Airways and to a lesser extent Virgin are seemingly so desperate that as long as you've got the CAA license, they're more than happy to sponsor a visa for non-Brits to come and work in the UK because they can't find enough people. And there are a small but seeminly not insignificant (since it keeps getting brought up) number of British people who for whatever reason ended up only holding EASA licenses, who would probably apply for those jobs if they weren't being told by the CAA that they needed to completely take again a complete ATPL theory course to convert a license which, if we're being honest, has little functional or syllabus difference, along with a number of people considering entry into the profession who have limited budgets and know that their likely entry is Ireland's unofficial airline and that they'll need to get an EASA license and can't budget for more than that, and then they are locked out of every other job in the UK as the price of entering the profession.
so you’ve conflated 3 groups here
1) EASA licence holders with no right to work in the UK
as I said above- as long as there’s no mutual recognition of this right for CAA licence holders why should the U.K. government screw over their own taxpayers to make concessions on this? Only a handful of UK airlines may benefit from this but not Uk nationals with CAA licences
2) Brits with EASA licences only
this group I have zero sympathy for. If they had EASA licences prior to 2023 all they had to do to gain a CAA licence alongside their EASA license/medical (they would never have been required to surrender anything) was pay a few hundred pounds to the UK CAA. if they have obtained a EASA licence post Brexit then more fool
them, I trained post Brexit and the advice from my ATO was always to align your licence with where you have the right to work.
3) same as point 2, you have to make decisions based on reality. And if you are paying 10s of thousands to train for this profession are we really going to pretend a few hundred extra are the barrier to this industry?
It would be absolutely valid if we went for mutual recognition between EASA and CAA ATPLs considering they are both ICAO licences but only if that went alongside right to work, if not then why should U.K. licence holders be sacrificed as usual? The US pilot market is the most lucrative in the world because of the right to work wall that exists+ how hard it is to obtain a FAA equivalent of your FCL. Of course it will benefit airlines and their bottom lines to be able to import an endless supply of foreign pilots into the marketplace but who pays the CAA’s fees and tax to the U.K. government?