jerezflyer
Question for you - if you did the ATPL exams in UK, how did a Spanish FTO accept your UK exam passes as exemption from IR theory (before doing the CPL)?
The Spanish FTO just took a photocopy of my UK ATPL results for their records. They were not particularly interested in which JAA State the exams had been sat, only that I had passed either the JAA IR or JAA ATPL exams. The FTO does not need to know which JAA State will finally issue the IR rating.
The only way I could see doing this would be to do a CAA/JAA CPL and then adding the Spanish IR rating to the licence.
Yes, if you have sat the UK JAA ATPL exams then you could either add the JAA IR (done in Spain) to your CAA/UK JAA CPL or to your CAA/UK JAA PPL.
However, someone in the Spanish CAA (DGAC) told me that they could not add any ratings (IR, FI) to a JAA licence issued outside Spain, and that you would have to do the change over - this does not make any sense - have you had experience of this???
This comes down to the State of Licence Issue thing again. I have a UK issued PPL so only the UK CAA can add ratings to it, even if these ratings have been done in other JAA countries. The Spanish DGAC could not add a JAA IR done in Spain on to a UK PPL/CPL.
As redout mentions above "You basically HAVE TO do your 14 ATPL exams under the same authority as your CPL." In addition, only the same authority as your CPL can add ratings to your licence (even if done in other JAA countries).
Clear as mud?