"any legal or natural person, operating or proposing to operate one or more aircraft"
Even the definition seems at odds with the operator being the pilot. The pilot can only be a natural person whereas the definition clearly envisages the operator being a trust or a company and also a trust or a company that owns more than one aircraft.
I still struggle with 421Cs concept that where a trust owns the aircraft, contracts for its maintenance, pays for its parking and insurance (and perhaps lays down conditions governing it use) EASA would argue that anyone piloting the aircraft becomes the operator.
It seems an attempt at a clever bit of word crafting to leave out commercial operators that are based overseas but use crew that are domiciled in the EU but capture private pilots who are domiciled in the EU and operate their aircraft through a trust company. If the trust is properly established, operated and is off shore I suspect EASA will have a job to break the trust and convince a court that the trust is a complete sham with its strings being entirely "pulled" by the "owner" who is also the pilot. However I suspect this is the best they could come up with. Not only would it be unpopular, but possibly illegal to legislate against off shore commercial operators, so you are left with trying to find some "artificial" way of distingusiging these from UK residents who own their aircraft via an off shore trust.
Last edited by Fuji Abound; 28th Sep 2010 at 11:13.