I work in one of the larger ops rooms in Europe,where we are reponsible for around 100 medium to large jet aircraft.
I work alongside a mixture of guys,some with a licence and some without, and those with a licence are normally well versed in flight planning, but are often studious types who lack the ability to think and react quickly in a given situation, in fact the very idea of some of these guys iintervening in a live operation brings me out in a cold sweat!
Whether or not our American cousins like it, I would argue that that the faa licence in Europe is irrelevant, and that FAA dispatchers are not sufficiently qualified to intervene in alive operation- if the pilot needs direct intervention then get the on call pilot involved to help out-an FAA dispatcher is not qualified to operate the aircraft, and in my opinion not best qualified to make marginal decisions.
I feel that a tailor made Euro ops officer qualification is required, as right now we have to be jacks of all trades and masters of none so to speak-if an accurate sylabus could be devised then great, as it would no doubt improve the efficiency and quality of the operations room.
rgds fh TUI OPS haj (formally Hapag Lloyd ops!!)