Spacecadet
I fully understand your position and why you did the EASA ATPL exams I can also understand the EU and elements within the EU regretting the huge numbers of mainly FAA aircraft which have developed over 40 years legally within the EU.
Who is at fault the pilots and aircraft owners or the regulators over all those years.
As stated EASA had a clean sheet could have saved the EU a pack of money by incorporating the FAA tried and tested as well as universally accepted system and adjusted that for EU specific needs
Instead they chose to create their own regulations doing exactly what forced so many towards FAA in the first place.
Aviation knows no boundaries and the world is a shrinking place which will mean that in the future it will become more important for pilots to work in one or other country or even another continent.
Safety is about standardisation less scope for mistakes and I see EASA as a huge missed opportunity to reduce costs and really support aviation world wide
The market place rules only a stick works in communism or dictatorships and had the EU put something equally attractive and cost effective in place the problem would have died naturally.
Nevertheless we have EU laws on rights to work and discrimination laws and not everyone can trundle off to a full time school for six months and have a job at the end of it or because of family commitments don't suit 1 to 2 years distance learning. That is not even looking at the costs of getting and maintaining those licenses for 2 registers
the EU have a moral obligation to those people to make sure they can continue working till retirement age.
If I was 40 I would do the same as you with maybe 27 years flying ahead, plenty of earning time to draw back the large costs of achieving and maintaining dual licenses with an option to work public transport in Europe
But in my case I don't have that time
Others are happy flying private aircraft and do not want to fly public transport
Grandfather righting was always an accepted practice to protect pilots from legislation damage which through no fault of their own would severely damage their livelihoods and occupation
I see NO reason why EASA and the commission could not meet their moral human right obligations by issuing these pilots with restricted ATPLs ? restricted to NON public transport with at most a pass in Air Law. That would save any back door entry to an EASA unrestricted ATP and would help a lot to a steady transition over time without damaging the pilots Pilots caught up in this
Pace
Last edited by Pace; 14th Apr 2016 at 10:34.