FAA License

[long final]

I need to get an FAA License. I have my UK PPL, don't need to go to the US, just need the license. I have heard rumours that this isn't as easy as once was due to Sept. 11.

Can anyone tell me which way to go.

Thanks

LF

[Keef]

I don't know of any way, now, that you can get an FAA licence without going to the USA. The folks in Frankfurt and London don't issue them any more.

The process to get a reciprocal one in the USA is now much more difficult (see separate thread on here), and the UK Data Protection Act means the CAA can't confirm to the FAA that your UK licence and medical are still valid, so the bureaucrats have triumphed at the moment.

The only certain route at the moment is to get a US visa, go to a decent US flight school, and do a full unrestricted FAA PPL.

[BlueLine]

There is a school at Norwich who do FAA licences. Exams on site; Flight Test wherever you can find an FAA examiner

[MAJIC9]

see www.aopa.org -- they have the link to the FAA's latest info with instructions on how to proceed...

[Keef]

Unfortunately, there are AFAIK no FAA examiners in Europe - unless you fly your own in.

The FAA new process for issuing reciprocal licences (as published by the FAA and linked off the AOPA-US website) requires you to fill in a detailed form. The FAA then sends that to the CAA to verify. The CAA can't do so (yet, anyway) because that would contravene the Data Protection Act.

Boom boom.

[2Donkeys]

Keef wrote:

Unfortunately, there are AFAIK no FAA examiners in Europe - unless you fly your own in.

Fortunately, you are mistaken. Connie Wood in Heidelberg is approved for all fixed wing certificates and ratings up to and including ATP.... unless he has hung up his wings in recent months.

[slim_slag]

The CAA can't do so (yet, anyway) because that would contravene the Data Protection Act.

Do we know it's the Data Protection Act? If you (the data subject) give written consent, your data can be transfered to those nasty non European places like the US :)

Why not just write to the CAA and give them permission - even instruct them - to release your data on request by the FAA. The letter goes in your file, and when the request arrives, the confirmation is sent.

Yeh, I know, things never work that way when dealing with these QUANGO type organisations.

Who is going to pay for it? And who gets the cushy job in the CAA to fly to the US on the junket to make sure the Yanks have got their act together? Ooo, I can hear the infighting already.

Call me a cynic, but I did some work for another UK regulatory body who had to share data with their US equivalent. It took over a year to get all the UK internal politics worked out, for the UK legal team to make everybody think they were important, and for the various memoranda be written. That was even though the 'data subjects' had given their written consent to the transfer of such data. The convenience of the 'customers' were the last things to be considered.

[Keef]

No, don't *know* it's the DPA. As you say, you've written on the form which implies you agree.

BUT ... the form says nothing about agreeing that the CAA can provide your information, and since some of that's medical, I can bet someone has good reasons for not doing anything yetawhile.