which begs the question of what a 10,000 hour ATPL does if he wants a job with an EU domicile airline or operator !!
That would be taken care of in a different way. In almost every country (I have researched this a little bit) an ICAO CPL/IR can get a local CPL/IR validation, or even a conversion, provided he has a relationship with a local commercial operator of aircraft registered in that country.
I have been offered one such deal, which would get me a JAA CPL/IR, but it would involve me living there for a bit... no use.
ATPL validation works similarly.
However I doubt say Virgin will take on anybody without the full gold plated JAA 14-exam stuff, etc. It was funny to read about R. Branson publicly offering to take on Capt. Sullenberger... how would he square the paperwork on that, I have absolutely no idea
S. (not a spring chicken) would have taken one look at the JAA exams and stuck 1 finger up.
I wonder though how many FAA IRs will be rushing to do the exams and 15 hours just in case ...
A significant number I know have been recently.
The 7 exams can be swatted up from the question bank and passed in two goes (revise properly only those you failed; there is no FAA-style oral exam probing the marginal-pass area) at Gatwick, and the 15hrs flying can be done at a few places. It can even be done in an N-reg (I know of one case) with DfT permission. The ground school is no longer mandatory-residential but from my enquiries you need what is basically a bit of preparation and a signoff to sit the exams which costs about £1k, plus the exam fees. Still a pretty big project, and I gather much of the large Flyer group of a few years ago has dropped out.
I don't see the rationale for doing this at present, if you own an N-reg. Obviously if you have a G-reg (or rent one) then you need to do something...... but then why did you do the
FAA IR?