Licence Verification

[AlsWings]

I'm travelling out to the USA in september to do some general touring. I've done a search ;) and I think I'm up to speed with the process of obtaining an FAA PPL on the basis of my UK JAA PPL.
Question I have is timescales for licence and medical validation. The FAA suggest that validation of a medical should be done 90 days in advance...
From the FAA website...Rating or Medical Certificate
A person who is applying for a U.S. rating or medical certificate on the basis of a foreign license must apply for that certificate at least 90 days before arriving at the designated FAA FSDO where the applicant intends to receive the U.S. certificate. This initial application step is the responsibility of the applicant.

I have 75 days until my intended trip so I'm a bit concerned. Does anyone have experience of actual timescales? or am I up the creek with no paddle :sad:

[julian_storey]

I reckon you might just be ok if you get on it straight away.

You need to download some forms from the web. The first you need to send to the CAA (with some money!). The second, you need to send to the lovely FAA with copies of all your UK docs (and NO MONEY! :D) specifiying the Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) in the US at which you would like to collect your licence.

The CAA will contact the FAA to verify that you are whom you claim to be and that you have the qualifications that you claim to have.

As soon as the FAA hear from the CAA, they will send you a verification letter which is valid (so far as I recall!) for six months. Once you have the letter- you then MAKE AN APPOINTMENT with the FSDO which you specified - then you present yourself there at the appointed time with all of your documents AND the FAA letter.

The FSDO will then issue you with a temporary "issued on the basis of" FAA PPL which is valid for 120 days. At some point thereafter (takes a couple of months) you will get a permanent FAA PPL sent to you. This is then vaid forever PROVIDED that the UK Licence on which it was based remains valid.

The FAA won't charge you a penny for any of this! If you've never flown in the USA before - you will quickly discover that America is the land of aviation opportunity. No landing fees, no approach fees, often no parking fees etc.

Their bread is horrible though and their beer sucks - so nowhere is perfect :-)

Have fun!

Julian

[gcolyer]

The FSDO will then issue you with a temporary "issued on the basis of" FAA PPL which is valid for 120 days


Not always. they can decline your application if they want. other things to be careful of is they can insist you have a valid FAA medical, which is excatly what they done with me.


their beer sucks


That depends.
Sam Adams=great
1812=great

will quickly discover that America is the land of aviation opportunity


Not wrong there!

VFR flight following is great!

[AlsWings]

Thanks for the replies so far, can anyone recall what the response time of the FAA was?
On the point of the medical, what was the process to get that sorted? Just want to try and have everything covered.:)

[172driver]

Don't know about the FAA, but the CAA claim 10 working days as average for a verification.

[Chilli Monster]

You don't actually need a medical for a based on certificate, and the FSDO were wrong to insist on this in gcolyers case

14 CFR 61.75 (b)(4) is the reference in the FAR's

[Dave Gittins]

I sent the letters (forms) to CAA and FAA about 21 December and collected my "based on" in Denver on Feb 26th 2007.

I had had my letter from the FAA in Surrey about 3 weeks prior to that.

(The shame was that Denver didn't have a copy and I had to get Oaklahoma City to fax it to Denver .. but it was all done in a couple of hours).

The Orville and Wilbur club membership card arrived back in Surrey about beginning of April.

DGG

[julian_storey]

You don't actually need a medical for a based on certificate, and the FSDO were wrong to insist on this in gcolyers case
14 CFR 61.75 (b)(4) is the reference in the FAR's
This was also my understanding.

[gcolyer]

It is true...if you follow the regs strictly then you don't need an FAA medical. However if the FAA say "you need an FAA mdeical or I ain't giving you the licesne" what are you going to do?

It is not uncommon for them to request an FAA medical.

[Whopity]

If you are operating on a UK Licence then you need a UK medical for that to be valid. As the FAA Licence is issued on the basis of, and that licence must be valid for the FAA one to be valid, then you have a valid medical, the UK one. You do not need an FAA medical.

[gfunc]

I'm currently living up here in NY and it took the CAA less than a week to charge me 36 quid (including the postage time!), but the FAA took about six weeks to process everything and send me back my letter. My impression from speaking to folks at my flying club is that the response time from the FAA is highly variable.

You might not run into trouble with the issue of the temporary certificate with your UK medical, but you might find wherever you are renting the aircraft from might require a FAA one because of stupid insurance policies etc. The 'rental agreement' where I fly stipulates a US medical is required. It might be worth the $100 and one hour of your time getting this done.

The whole process is straightforward, relaxed and everyone always want to talk about flying!

[Dave Gittins]

Oh happy days. Denver FSDO did not have any problem with my CAA medical (just copied the deatils from it) and nor did the school in Colorado where did my FR and rented a C-172. they just wanted to see my "Temporary Airman's Cert"

Other people's experience sounds like a problem I had with the Greek's in Crete (their authorities not the flying school) where they categorically refused to acknowledge the existence of the JAR and insisted no Greek License ... no fly.

[AlsWings]

Just for information, I got my letter from the FAA the other day. All well within the the 90 day period. :)

[dublinpilot]

I did the verification thing (again) recently. Admitedly it was via the IAA not the CAA. The whole thing took less than 3 weeks, but then the IAA don't charge for the verification etc. No doubt the processing of the charge will add to the CAA time!

Get it in quick, and you should be ok. You can fax it to the FAA, to avoid postal delays.

When you get the piece of paper from the FAA that you are supposed to take to the FSDO, ring them up to a) make an appointment to see them, and b) to make sure that they have actually received the paper work from Oklahoma.

dp

[mattia_70]

Hi
I followed the procedure (both from FAA and CAA) for verification of my JAR PPL (uk issued) to get a FAA PPL.
I sent my applications by fax at the beginning of NOvember and will be in the US in mid January so I should be on time with my applications even if I was supposed to send them at least 90 days before the day I will collect my FAA PPL.

My question is:
is there any way to be sure that my faxes were received correctly (apart from sending them also to myself to see that the transmission quality is good)?
I do not want to find myself in a situation where I wait and then find out at last minute that the applications forms were never correctly received.

Any phone number or email address to contact the FAA (I suppose that for CAA I should contact Personnel Licencing Dept.).
Thanks

[S-Works]

You will get a letter from the FAA confirming that they have your details. This letter you take with you to your nominated FSDO.

You can call Oklahoma on +1 718 995 5450 if you want to check.

[NorthSouth]

I am going to the USA in July and have just kicked off the verification process. However my medical expires on 30 May - between the expected letter of authorisation from the FAA and my arrival at the FSDO. Technically I will then be going to the States with an authorisation that expired when my medical expired - although of course I will have renewed my medical by then.

There won't be enough time to do the verification after renewing my medical in late May. Does anyone have any experience of how the FAA deals with this situation? I have e-mailed them to ask but don't know whether I'll get an answer.

Ta

NS

[DLT1939]

I presume you will be applying for an FAA licence on the basis of your foreign licence.

You should be okay as FAR 61.75(b)(4) only requires you to hold a current medical certifcate, see:
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations: (http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=362145d8a4d937398c5dd5fa8b921b30&rgn=div8&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.1.2.2.1.10&idno=14)

To be 100% safe when renewing your medical you could chose an AME who is authorised to conduct FAA medicals and get a FAA certificate as well. See Question 2 of the FAA procedures manual:
FSIMS Document Viewer (http://fsims.faa.gov/PICDetail.aspx?docId=05EA9A36061255FF8525734F00766662)

[dont overfil]

Is there certain FSDO offices that have a history of not accepting a national medical?
There was me thinking I had done all that was neccessary to guarantee my Bahamas trip in April and this springs up.
I intended to make an appointment at the Orlando office.
DO.

[S-Works]

You won't have a problem in Orlando. The guys there are great, Clifford Baggett is real gentleman. I added Language proficiency to my CPL while I was waiting for a couple of friends to pick up their 61.75 certificates and he was very efficient, friendly and knowledgeable.

[421C]

In addition to the paperwork that you are given by the FAA/CAA etc - take your government issued photo id - passport etc. and that when flying you must carry the government issued photo id with you at all times.


A small point, but I believe that for non-US citizens exercising the privileges of an FAA 61.75 or standalone certificate, the only form of gov't issued photo-id that's acceptable is a passport.

[FREDAcheck]

If you've not flown in the US before, then I strongly recommend you get a copy of "FAR/AIM 2009". £11.50 from Amazon UK. It's an inch and a half thick, but at the beginning there's a section where it says what you need to read as a PPL (a small fraction of it). Do read the recommended sections, as airspace, radio, circuit (or rather "pattern" in US terminology) procedures are all rather different in the US. Nothing dramatic, but it helps enormously to have read it before you arrive.

[S-Works]

Or you can access the FAR/AIM free at:

GPO Home Page (http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/)

[dont overfil]

A friend just back from the USA was charged $75 for his 61.75 licence.
DO.

[dublinpilot]

Charged by who?

He went to the FSDO, and the inspector there charged him cash for issuing it?

You sure that it wasn't an instructor charging for doing the BFR?

[dont overfil]

Charged by the FSDO. It was an initial application.
DO.

[S-Works]

That is interesting as there is no charging scheme for an FSDO for these services. If he had gone to a local DPE then they can make a charge but that is not FSDO.

[dont overfil]

Hi Bose,
That may be the case.
DO.

[mm_flynn]

A small point, but I believe that for non-US citizens exercising the privileges of an FAA 61.75 or standalone certificate, the only form of gov't issued photo-id that's acceptable is a passport.

A passport is likely to be the only valid photo-id for all of us operating on FAA licences over here (based on and standalone/ US Citizen and non-Citizen)). From memory, all of the other photo-ids are specifically US Federal IDs or US State IDs.

[englishal]

I added Language proficiency to my CPL while I was waiting for a couple of friends to pick up their 61.75 certificates and he was very efficient, friendly and knowledgeable.
You shouldn't have to do that if you have an FAA CPL. All you have to do is apply for a new ticket because by doing the CPL you must have passed a check ride with an examiner, and one of the pre-requisites of holding a CPL is being able to talk English! I just paid my $2 and did it online.....

[S-Works]

My CPL did not state English Proficient so while I was there with my friends I checked into it hence the reason I got to meet the very pleasant Mr Baggett and the reason why I know there is not a charge for a 61.75 certificate issued by an FSDO.

[englishal]

I see....Just wondered what Mr Baggett did to add English Proficient to your ticket - For us CPL holders without EP, all we do is fill out a form online, pay $2, and a week later a new ticket came through the post......

[S-Works]

I have no idea what he did, however it now says English Proficient. Why would I want to pay $2 and have it done by post when I was stood in the office anyway?

[englishal]

Dunno - I thought that all FAA certificates came from a central source ("The FAA") - seeing as they are a natty plastic card containing all your details, certificates and ratings. I'm surprised if they actually manufacture the cards at each FSDO!

I could understand it if someone had to prove that their "based on" certificate needed the English Proficient statement - then you'd have to prove it to the FSDO man, and he'd submit the application back to the FAA saying you were indeed proficient and even possibly issue a "temp" certificate....But of course one can't have a based on CPL - see the confusion?

Still, you live and learn....

[S-Works]

I'm surprised if they actually manufacture the cards at each FSDO!

They don't they issue a little bit of paper, that says all the relevant stuff including English Proficient, the natty card follows later.....

[youngskywalker]

Did it online, got the English language added onto my CPL, came through the post in just over a week. May have to do it again in the near future as I beleive they are still intending adding a picture ID onto the plastic card certificate. Would be a good idea, save having to carry seperate ID around.

[S-Works]

Photo certificate? Where did you hear about that?

I know I could have done it online, I think Al missed the point, I was already in the FSDO on other business so I sorted it while I was there......

[youngskywalker]

I seem to recall being told something about it from my KingAir instructor while at SIMCOM last year. Makes sense I guess.

P.S If anyones interested AOPA make a nice little leather wallet thing that holds the FAA licence and the medical on the reverse...

[G-ROAR]

What is the latest on the PPL FAA license-english proficiency.
I have been told that the only way is to go to the USA. I do not want to do this because of time and costs. Surely someone in the UK or the FAA station at Le Bourget could do this.:sad:

[MarkerInbound]

G-ROAR,

Take a look at the FAA web site and read the posts above. If you have a stand alone FAA certificate, you are "English Proficient," that's part of the requirements to get an FAA certificate. However, that was too confusing for some countries so now the FAA is adding EP to all certificates. Send OKC 2 dollars and they'll send you a new one with the EP endorsement.

[IO540]

SoCal - are you saying that for a standalone cert, the $2 internet option is the only way, and cannot be done in person?

[S-Works]

I did mine in person in Orlando as I happened to be in the office for something else.