Did company approval work well under the CAA?
Examples.
1)Engineer X fails the UK engineers licence, his employer a major UK operator then gives him full company approval without any form of examination or retraining.
2) Same company then gives full approvals to other engineers without licenses (again with no examination) and advises them not to sit the licence exam as it might cause problems.
Can you imagine the outcry if this had been pilots and not engineers.
The CAA then changed the system so that a basic licence was a requirement to hold company approval. So in effect holders of approvals were still licensed engineers.