Nigelh, you should have received the e-mail I forwarded onto you from Tim. I have had the French translated by my sons girlfriend and it does say that they would accept a UK registered helicopter flown on an FAA licence in their airspace.......but I would regard this possibly as an exemption for the person who requested it in the first place and I think it would be unwise to assume that you can just go ahead and do it, remember this person also applied to the German authorities aswell, although a copy of this letter is unavailable at the moment but I believe the content of this letter is the same, the German authorities were happy to let this happen. As I said before, one of the options open to you is to apply to the relevant authorities which is what this person did. I understand where your frustrations come from with regarding putting a new type on your licence, but unlike the FAA licence which is a group rating, the UK licence has always as far I am aware been a type rating, and prior to JAR you would have been required to do a minimum of 5 hours training /testing. This requirement of additional flight training is nothing new and if you want to put this type on your UK licence then you will have to do it, as is the requirement to having an examiner who has not been involved in your flight training. It is not a question of common sense but is a legal requirement. The excerpt of the ANO is interesting but you do have to bear in mind that this is UK law, not European law, which is where you want to fly. I have also been led to believe this has more to do with icao licence priveliges rather than the open skies policy. As I said to you when we first discussed this, if you don't want to go through with the type rating to put it on your UK licence then I would contact the relevant authorities and get the clearance from the horses mouth so to speak. I will call you tomorrow.