EU committee gives qualified nod to EASA-FCL
The European Parliament’s Transport Committee has expressed
reservations about EASA’s FCL proposals but will not stand in their
way, pending a further debate when all the proposals have been
translated into all European languages. At a debate on May 25th MEPs
were given sometimes-incomplete answers – the European Commission’s
representative claimed there were ‘safety concerns’ over FAA licences
– and the Chairman of the Transport Committee, Brian Simpson MEP, said
that the issue was America’s refusal to accept European licences. “Is
this a case of America dictating to us?” he asked. “If the US won’t
recognise ours, why should we recognise theirs?”
Some MEPs made very good cases on behalf of European pilots, notably
the British Conservative MEPs Jackie Foster and Philip Bradbourn and
the Austrian Green MEP Eva Lichtenberger. Ms Foster said that from a
UK perspective, there had been a mutual recognition of FAA licences
down the years and it wasn’t a big issue. “Clearly the UK was okay
with FAA-trained pilots and there were no safety issues,” she said.
Even though the deadline had been extended to 2014,
Philip Bradbourn added: “This EASA decision threatens a long-standing
status quo. It is a solution without a problem. The domicile of the
pilot is irrelevant.” There was no reason to change the system, he
said. “Is there any evidence that FAA licences are unsafe? Cost is a
real issue. If pilots have to convert – it’s estimated that some
68,000 pilots will be affected, and that’s a very conservative number
– the cost of retraining will be £125 million.” The solution was quite
simple, he added – in July the European Parliament should reject
EASA-FCL until a firm bilateral agreement was found.
They received support from Ms Lichtenberger, who asked: “Are European
pilot tests so outdated now that we are requiring unnecessary things
from our European pilots? Is there also an element of age
discrimination concerning medicals?”
But Brian Simpson said the European Parliament had passed the Basic
Regulation with the European-licensing element included and could not
now say it didn’t want it. (The Basic Regulation was outline law
written by the EC, on which EASA was then expected to put flesh.) “The
solution seems to be mutual recognition of pilot licences,” he said.
“The issue seems to be the US not accepting EU licences.”
For the EC, aviation policy director Matthew Baldwin said he believed
the FAA licence issue was among those that had been ‘satisfactorily
resolved’. The EC had a ‘clear mandate’ from the Basic Regulation for
the licensing of pilots residing in the EU. They were trying to settle
this through an annexe to a Bilateral Agreement with the United
States. He added: “In certain respects, we believe some of the US
licences may need to comply with additional EU requirements for safety
reasons.”
IAOPA Senior Vice President Martin Robinson says: “While this issue
was certainly in the Basic Regulation, that did not give EASA carte
blanche to hang any baggage in pleased on it. The idea of genuine
mutual acceptance of licenses and ratings being enshrined in an annexe
to the BASA is, at best, a very long-term expedient. Mr Baldwin’s
raising of safety concerns demands and explanation. Thousands of FAA
licence holders fly in Europe every day, and have done for decades. On
what is the claim of ‘safety concerns’ based?
The Committee is now waiting for the full translations before making a
decision. The final proposals are expected to be published in
November.
IAOPA to quiz Goudou
EASA Executive Director Patrick Goudou will be present at the EASA
Advisory Board meeting on June 8th, where he will face questions from
IAOPA Europe on FCL issues, and in particular how EASA is going to
communicate what it is doing its bilateral discussions on licensing
with the FAA. Martin Robinson says: “I think EASA has a duty to
consult with industry on the content of the annexe, and we would
welcome a more open dialogue on this issue.”
Can EASA ‘partnership’ change the rules?
EASA’s recently-formed Part-FCL Partnership Group met for the second
time last week, with Nick Wilcock of AOPA UK is IAOPA’s
representative. The FCL-PG meets twice a year for a two-day conference
in Cologne and has the following stated objectives:
To reach a common understanding of the European system for pilot licensing;
To provide information regarding possible gaps in Part-FCL discovered
during the preparation of implementation, thus providing input to
rulemaking activities in the field of FCL;
To exchange mutual information on implementation issues to support the
transition process;
To develop a common understanding of the new rules with the help of
EASA where interpretation of rules is needed;
To exchange information and to discuss alternative means of compliance
for the common understanding of how they are to be implemented;
To provide input to the respective Advisory Group of National
Authorities and Safety Standards Consultative Committee members (by
way of the meeting results) for their task of prioritisation of
rulemaking tasks, thus contributing to a strategic view on further
improving Part-FCL;
Originally, there was an additional objective:
To support EASA activities in the respective NAAs and
Organisations/Associations.
However, at Nick Wilcock’s insistence this has been amended, as it
could well have conflicted with IAOPA’s political lobbying rights. It
now reads:
To provide an EASA forum for NAAs and Organisations/Associations.
The next meeting will be in November; if you have FCL issues you wish
to raise, please forward them to Martin Robinson no later than October
15th.
For the FCL-PG to have any worthwhile purpose, it is vital that EASA
heeds our concerns and produces a methodology which enables swift
regulatory amendment to be achieved. Currently there appears to be no
such methodology available, and EASA rulemakers have shown scant
interest in amending unsatisfactory legislative proposals.
Basically we have all been conned and screwed where do we go from here ?