I should state at the outset that this does not affect me in any way, however I find it nothing short of incredible that an ICAO member state is going to ignore the provisions of ICAO Annex 1 and impose a requirement to hold a flight crew licence unrelated to the state of registry of the aircraft being flown.
Elsewhere in these forums is a thread regarding the establishment of a crewe for FedEx in Paris to cover their B757 operation in Europe. Are EASA going to insist that all the FedEx pilots obtain JAR licences? Of course not, because the operation (FedEx) is not domiciled in Europe.
So why then would they devote so much time and energy to pursuing a few private jet operators?
Please don't give me the "..we have different air in Europe.." line.
If one ICAO member state starts ignoring the provisions of Annex 1 then we might as well just scrap ICAO and wind the clock back 70 years. Oh, and whilst we are at, why not disallow foreign-registered aircraft from landing in Europe too.
