421C I am neither a lawyer nor an accountant, but I'm pretty sure that you can set up a structure whereby the 'operational control' resides with some non-EU based trust or company. The problem I can see is the closer you get to a watertight structure, the closer you also get to an AOC or other CAT situation.
172Driver,
The problem is as follows:
If genuine operational control resided in the offshore entity, then what on earth is the point of this construct? Presumably this discussion relates to people on the forum who are presently N-reg (trust beneficiary) owner-pilot-operators and their need for EASA FCL licences from 2012.
If you transfer genuine operational control to some Trust lawyer in Delaware, then you no longer have an N-reg airplane you can use in any sensibe manner the way you do presently. If you can continue to do so, then the genuine operational control does not reside with the offshore entity. It's a sham that I believe would collapse in court in minutes. Perhaps one could fraudulently create an edifice of funding and instructions and purpose by which the "offshore operator" instructs you to fly to places that (coincidentally) are where and when you want to fly, but this sort of thing is seems so self-evidently silly and transparent to me that I am surprised anyone would believe, for a moment, it would be robust.
The tough bit would not be ramp checks (which will always be meaningless, due to the obvious impossibility of on the spot verification of "residence" etc).
IO, I'll repeat my previous answer to this point. The ramp check would be trivially easy. "Oh Mr Pilot, you say you don't have EASA FCL qualifications because this aircraft is operated by a non-EU resident. Fair enough, sign this declaration to this effect, and we will follow up at our leisure". It may be impossible to verify the operator and residency
on the spot, but it is trivially easy for them to follow-up subsequently. How many "operators" do they have to nail this way for the message to get through? How much of a Sherlock Holmes does the ramp inspector or his back office colleague have to be?
brgds
421C