As the one irish person, from what i can see in this argument, I am going to stand up for the IAA. They are perfectly entitled to offer validations for people to fly Irish registered aircraft if they so choose. Iceland does it too as can any JAA country if they wish. How is it that the english are sooo chummy with the JAA and europe when it comes to flying while at the same time hate the EU!! Perhaps the CAA in gatwick should stop being such complete A-holes about letting europeans with forgein licenses come home and fly, it may stop the very situation you are complaining about!!! I did my training in USA, Cananda and have ratings on the 737 and king air and the CAA treated me like a lepper all because of their outragous JAR regs!! Last time I looked boeings were made in seattle!! I guess they build extra special ones for the UK?? how do you expect one to fork out another 64K to start flying from scratch? Also, why is it that any new member EU state can automatically convert their national license to JAA and I cant even get a look in?? I remember standing in gatwick next to an eastern european bloke who could barely string a sentence together in english, and the CAA hapily converted his national license for him, all because his country just joined the EU, he told me he was off to join easyjet!!! Go figure?????
If we in Ireland choose to use a bit of common sense to solve our companies problems then we have every right too. The CAA can do what they want in england and we will do what we want in ireland. And before you rag on the Irish set up you should look at how oxford and cabair have been in league with the CAA for yrs...the schools write the ridiculous rules to keep students from having a choice of training else where. thats called monopoly and protectionism! Dont you think if BA needed pilots desperately the CAA would bend....you bet your ass they would.
It all comes down to money. no bucks, no buck rogers! If airlines cannot make money they will go bust and if they go bust there is no need for pilots. as for americans flying in europe i have no problems with that at all. lots and i mean lots of european blokes get their work permits to work in the US or Asia or elsewhere, lots of people like me got screwed when the JAA was introduced and had to look else where becasue we werent welcome in JAA land. It amazes me how many pilots here have no clue about running a business though. It all about making money. Airlines need to make money to stay aflot...they dont care how they meet their quota, just as long as the can make a profit. pilots and pilot nationalities have nothing to do with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They just need able bodies to fly their shiney planes and make money for them!!!!
