Journey Man
A well written piece which in principal I agree with but I equally add that there are cockups in CAT too even with all the inbuilt safeguards
It may surprise you to know as it surprised the CAA too but statistically private jets flown by professional crew have a better safety record than equivalent in AOC operations.
I am sure that is nothing to do with better pilots but more to do with private jets being treated like a beloved private car with the same chauffeur
But on the whole I agree with the gist of your sentiments
Yes I went the FAA way with an ATP as that was where historically private jets were in Europe and it was perfectly legitimate to work them in Europe for far longer than the EU has existed. My other sentiments are more political and I firmly believe EASA missed a golden opportunity of harmonising aviation world wide
The FAA system is tried and tested and universally the most used model worldwide. As aviation knows no barriers from a safety angle it makes every sense that we all used the same regulation structure so that there is no room for errors going from one continent to another.
Going forward people are becoming more no barriers in movement for work too and in future pilots should be able to take work simply in different parts of the globe
EASA could have been more forward thinking and developed a system more towards the FAA system with some changes to suit Europe but that would not have secured the longevity of their department size, their lavish pay structures and benefits and so they decided to reinvent the wheel something they were warned about years ago by the commission.
i have been flying 30 accident free years plus so it won't make a massive difference to me other than I will stop flying a few years earlier faced with the costs and time in converting to holding licenses which have no bearing on the reg I fly. That will be a cost /time decision I will need to make depending on how things pan out.
But that doesn't change my opinion on the ridiculousness of the whole thing and taking things off topic
Pace