Getting JAA PPL in other country than residence

[Poeli]

Hi,
I have some questions concerning the JAA ppl:
- If I get my Hungarian jaa PPL licence, can I fly with it in the rest of Europe, in france for example to fly with F registered airplanes or Belgium, in OO registered airplanes?
- The check flights and documents, would those always (even after my ppl) need to be send out to the Hungarian authorities?

I just want to know if a PPL from another JAA country gives me the same 'freedoms' as the ppl in my country of residence...
Greetings,

[BackPacker]

In essence, yes. Within JAA-land, all JAA-compliant PPLs are mutually recognized. So the French accept your Hungarian PPL for flight on an F-reg, the Belgium authorities accept it for flight on an OO-reg and so on.

There may be exceptions though, so let us know your exact intentions and maybe somebody may know about them.

Furthermore, you need to be careful about your medical. This is a can of worms that I don't understand fully, but some countries have medical standards/tests that do not conform to JAR-FCL but are accepted in that country nevertheless. From memory, Germany is amongst these. This means that you can get a German class II medical and fly with it on a German JAA PPL, but not on any other PPL. Or something along those lines.

Anyone knows the exact details?

Anyway, this point will be moot anyway shortly, when everybody will be given an EASA license and (presumably) EASA medicals too.

To answer your second question, yes, if your PPL is issued by the Hungarian authorities, all your correspondence about it is with them too. Amongst other things, this means that the JAA examiner that does your revalidation papers, needs to use the Hungarian forms. This could lead to funny situations if the Hungarian forms are in Hungarian, but your JAA examiner happens not to speak Hungarian.

And here's a tip. If you are using a non-Hungarian, but JAA examiner for your revalidations, simply make a copy of his/her license and examiner authorizations, and send that along with the rest of the paperwork. That JAA examiner will not be known to the Hungarian authorities, but this way they'll know things are legit. At least, this is how I do it (UK issued JAA PPL, using Dutch examiners).

[IO540]

Interesting.

I thought that officially you could not hold say a Hungarian JAA PPL unless you were resident there.

I do happen to know of cases where they just give you a PPL if you turn up with another JAA one (not Hungary) so clearly this rule is not applied 100%

(Hungary is a tricky example because they are still going through the JAR-FCL merging phase - due to be completed in Feb 2011 according to a pilot I spoke to there in September).

This stuff is potentially relevant if say doing a JAA IR in say Spain or Greece. I know the UK CAA is bound to accept such an IR but picking up a local PPL while you are there would remove that risk, and one would convert it all back to the UK stuff upon returning to the UK.

[BackPacker]

As far as I know you get your PPL issued from the country which also administered your exams (both theory and practical). You can then transfer that PPL to one issued by your country of residence.

But you cannot simply go to an arbitrary country and get a PPL from them.

[S-Works]

Backpacker, you are quite correct. The country under whose CAA you did the flight training and exams will be the country that will issue your initial licence. If you go to Florida as an example and do a JAA licence, it will be the UK CAA that will issue you a licence as rule. This is because pretty much only the UK CAA allows overseas RTF/FTO's. Although this is starting to change.

You can then transfer your PPL to your home state of issue at a later date.

Language of paperwork is not an issue. All JAA paperwork has to be available in the local language and English and has to be completed in English. So if you look at the paperwork from somewhere like Hungary are Latvia the paperwork is in both languages. Every JAA country that we deal with accepts the UK CAA paperwork without question.

Hungary issues a JAR FCL compliant licence and recognise all other JAA examiners. One thing to bear in mind is that only the Hungarian CAA can sign a licence. So you would have to send the paperwork to the Hg CAA each time you require and amendment/renewal/revalidation. If you are out of the country then it could be a pain.

[Whopity]

If I get my Hungarian jaa PPL licence, can I fly with it in the rest of Europe, in france for example to fly with F registered airplanes or Belgium, in OO registered airplanes?Provided you have ICAO English Language Proficiency recorded in the licence; if not, you are confined to the State of Issue.

[LH2]

One thing to bear in mind is that only the Hungarian CAA can sign a licence. So you would have to send the paperwork to the Hg CAA each time you require and amendment/renewal/revalidation. If you are out of the country then it could be a pain.

Is this a specifity of the Hungarian licence that a JAR instructor from another country cannot sign renewals and revalidations on a Hungarian licence, unlike the licences of other JAR states?

The bit about place of residence and country of issue, while largely correct, is not enforced anywhere that I know of. Which is why you have British residents flying on Greek licences, Swiss pilots on French licences (not sure why, but it seems popular), and continental pilots on UK licences.

[IO540]

Indeed; I was offered an IR course in a certain warm place, which included a local JAA PPL for 6 euros, based on my UK one.

Still, with a bit of luck, EASA FCL will suffer a partial or total meltdown so this will all be moot.... but if not I certainly won't be doing my JAA IR in the UK, despite the UK being the only place where I could do it in my own N-reg.

Someone has kindly lent me some UK IR training material and I have been reading through it this week. None of it is hard but there is so much trivia and it all seems such contrived garbage...

They even tell you to fly a hold in Class G while you are waiting for your airways clearance (anybody with a brain would just fly the filed route but below CAS).

[S-Works]

Is this a specifity of the Hungarian licence that a JAR instructor from another country cannot sign renewals and revalidations on a Hungarian licence, unlike the licences of other JAR states?

No, it is common across many JAA states. The UK is much more generous in what it allows those with devolved authority to do.

[LH2]

No, it is common across many JAA states.

Could you point me to a source, or perhaps a couple of examples?

I hold a UK licence myself so no first hand experience, but I know the French allow this de jure (the national regulations are a verbatim copy of the JARs in this respect) and de facto (I know of pilots who revalidated their ratings with non-French examiners). Same goes for Italian, Spanish, and Czech licence holders.

[Sam Rutherford]

"But you cannot simply go to an arbitrary country and get a PPL from them."

Yes you can. My wife has done it. She is Belgian, we live in Belgium, the Belgian CAA are awful (sorry!). So, easy fix, go to Florida and get a UK issued JAR licence out there. She holds a UK JAR licence, with our Belgian address on it.

As someone else has posted you need to do the exams under the auspices of the country of issue - but you can just choose in advance where/by whom you do your exams.

[Poeli]

So you can chose which country issues the licence but you need to do the theory in this country?

[IO540]

Most European flying schools (and CAAs) accept the UK CAA exams sat in the UK at Gatwick.

In fact many countries use the UK CAA exam papers. I believe Greece uses only those (which you can sit at Gatwick for £60 each, or at Athens for a reported 5 euros each :) ). In Spain, I don't recall the details but IIRC they do the UK CAA ones, which you can sit also in the UK or in Spain.

There is a PDF, posted here a while ago, which lists which countries' IR (and presumably PPL) flight training and passes the UK CAA accepts, but that is a different issue, but one which does need to be checked out if one is doing the exams in one place and the flight training in another.

[S-Works]

I hold a UK licence myself so no first hand experience, but I know the French allow this de jure (the national regulations are a verbatim copy of the JARs in this respect) and de facto (I know of pilots who revalidated their ratings with non-French examiners). Same goes for Italian, Spanish, and Czech licence holders.

You are missing what I am saying. All if those countries you quote will accept any JAA examiner to carry out a skill test. However they then require the paperwork to be sent to the CAA and the CAA sign and stamp the licence not the examiner. I have first hand experience of doing tests on Czech, Spanish and Italians. We employ 2 out if 3!

There are many other JAA states who require the same process to be followed. Some states devolve the authority like the UK, others require the CAA to do it. All inline with the JAA regulations.

[BackPacker]

Yes you can. My wife has done it. She is Belgian, we live in Belgium, the Belgian CAA are awful (sorry!). So, easy fix, go to Florida and get a UK issued JAR licence out there. She holds a UK JAR licence, with our Belgian address on it.

That still validates my point. If you do your theory exams and flight test under the auspicies of the UK CAA, you *have to* go to the UK CAA to get the paperwork issued.

With the paperwork from Florida in hand, you *could not* go to the Begian authorities (or any JAA CAA for that matter) and have them issue a PPL directly. You first need to get the UK CAA issue you a PPL and then transfer it to the Belgian register. And you could only do that because you're a resident of Belgium.

I would have loved to do the theory exams in the UK (because they can be sat at, and graded by the school), go to somewhere sunny for my flight training (Spain, Cyprus, ...?) then go to my flight test here in, say, Austria (for the scenery of course) and then send all this resulting paperwork conveniently to the Dutch authorities but at the moment that's not possible. Maybe this is something that EASA will change.

And going back to the original point, at the moment only the UK certifies foreign flight schools, so if you go to Florida you have no choice but to end up communicating with Gatwick.

There are many other JAA states who require the same process to be followed. Some states devolve the authority like the UK, others require the CAA to do it. All inline with the JAA regulations.

Kudos to the CAA for including a "guidelines for examiners" with the actual form. The first time I asked the resident examiner here to do the paperwork for a revalidation, he was thoroughly confused until he read through the guidelines.

[S-Works]

And going back to the original point, at the moment only the UK certifies foreign flight schools, so if you go to Florida you have no choice but to end up communicating with Gatwick.

Actually not quite true anymore as I alluded to earlier. Latvia which is a full JAA member and fully mutually recognised also allows foreign flight schools. I am also told that they will be allowing the initial IR test to be done overseas by an approved JAA Examiner as part of this approval as well as CPL training and even exams. So finally people will be able to do a JAA IR in Florida for example.

[BackPacker]

Great news. The IR was the only thing that was missing from the Florida route.

If schools in Florida can combine the IR flight training/exam with the mandatory groundschool sessions in a single package, I might just do that.

From a practical point of view, how does this normally work? Do you send all the IR exam paperwork to Latvia, who then issue you some sort of IR insert for your license, which you can then trade in for a proper IR annotation with Gatwick?

[LH2]

You are missing what I am saying.

That is correct. I apologise for the misunderstanding.

[BillieBob]

So finally people will be able to do a JAA IR in Florida for example.But this will not be in accordance with JAR-FCL and so other member states can (and many probably will) refuse to recognise such ratings. After April 2012, of course, it will be against EU law, which will require not only the skill test but also a degree of acclimatisation flying to be completed in an EU member state.