When I posted this a while ago in the Bizjet forum, nobody there believed the above.
Do they know something, or are they just ignorant?
I am in two minds whether this astonishingly aggressive position is true. I know some well placed regulatory people who disagree with the aggressive interpretation, and Eric Sivel (head? of EASA rulemaking) himself has said similar things to various people face to face over the years (myself included).
As I have said many times, it would create havoc.
IO,
This is an odd sort of topic to debate. The principle that EU operators will need EU FCL Licences is not new. It was established in the original consultation to the EASA Basic Regulation. Then published in the Basic Regulation (ie. EU law), then in the original FCL-NPA draft, in the Comment Response Documents and now the final Draft.
I don't care who "doesn't believe it", or what anyone has said officially or unofficially. It's there in black and white. It's all on the EASA website.
The only question has been what mitigation may be available through the final NPA draft, now published. What is there is pretty limited - some licence conversion principles which are broadly similar to JAR-FCL (but with training requirements at ATO and NAA discretion), and the fairly big concession for turbine operators that 3rd country Type Ratings are fully accepted onto EASA FCL Licences for use on aircraft registered in that 3rd country.
I don't know a single person who has had any involvement or understanding of this process "who doesn't believe it". It's just silly. It's already been published as EU law (the Basic Regs) and draft EU legal Implementing Rules (EASA FCL).
It must then be easy to set up an "operator" in say Jersey, who leases the a/c out.
No. The definition of Operator is someone who has operational control of the aircraft. The EU lawyers very smartly worded this one IMHO. It would require a conspiracy in which you are the pretend 'corporate' pilot of some offshore entity which asked you to fly to places that coincidentally where the ones you wanted to fly to. Courts rip this kind of thing apart in minutes. The only legal avoidance possible is to go and reside outside the EU.
brgds
421C
PS
As I have said many times, it would create havoc.
...and I have disagreed with you many times. What 'havoc'? You've had this theory that the disruption the EASA FCL rules would impose on EU corporate operators of foreign-registered aircraft would lead to some lobbying effort which would scupper the whole thing. I think you have been proven wrong on this. It hasn't. It has barely deflected the whole process which has been running for over 4 years now.
I've made the arguments before so not sure I can be bothered to repeat them, but briefly - I don't believe the challenge of the JAA IR has any bearing at all on why business jets in Europe are operated on 3rd country registers. There are a mass of other reasons (tax, privacy, issues of cost and difficulty of getting EASA certification for certain types and modifications etc etc). None of these (very cleverly) are impacted by the EASA regs, only the FCL one.
Just go and look at how much of a shortage there is of pilots with European professional licences and then tell me how much 'havoc' there would be. I know a fair few people who fly N, M, VP turbine aircraft corporately, but I don't know any who don't have JAA qualifications. I am sure there are some, but not enough to cause even the mildest havoc....