partyboynew, the military accreditation issue has been pointed out to 22Gp fairly positively. Several times, I can assure you! The CAA's view is that, basically, if the UK military wishes to apply for accreditation to support recruiting and retention, MoD must produce a case for the CAA to shove under EASA's €urosnout.

The CAA cannot be expected to do MoD's groundwork - MoD must create the case!

Hark, you say, why do we need such a recruiting and retention incentive when Foxy and the Tory Boy have just slashed our requirements for pilots?

Because that's only true in the short term. If MoD doesn't sort this out now, then when the civil pilot surge requirement does arrive, many military pilots will simply bang out there and then, rather than being retained until they qualify for the 'get your licence from stores' point. Why stay longer than you have to, if to do so doesn't grant you any extra exemption - and disadvantages you on airline seniority lists?

There must be some ex-Nimrod and ex-Harrier pilots who can be allocated the task of sorting all this out, shirley?

BEagle, that all makes sense (god knows if I had half a second of spare time I would take it on myself) however it doesnt quite answer my question;

What about those who wish to do the full ATPL course (all the exams) who aren't in the bracket for the 'free' one.

Is there still a deadline of Apr 2012 for the military flying to count towards a frozen ATPL? (assuming that the RAF does not submit a valid case to EASA).

Im being purely selfish here, I have 1500 hours total. I'm not going to get 2000 and 1500 P1 for a long while. So that means the full bristol course plus an IRT at considerable expense to me - I have resigned myself to this. Do I need to be able to complete all of that before Apr 2012? Or is that deadline only an issue for those with 2000 hrs+ who want to get out of doing all the exams?

ta

I can tell you that 22Gp are on the case, and that a small team has been set up to liase with the CAA and to ease the transition to EASA rules.

The CAA's view of who should staff this is not mine. Fair enough, ten years ago the MOD set the current system up as a 'retention incentive', and the onus on producing the case for military exemptions and liasing with the CAA clearly lay with the MOD at that point, it was their initiative. The current situation is different, Part FCL does not say 'the national Authority may present a case if it feels like it...' it says 'the responsible Authority shall credit military experience...'. To my mind that puts the onus squarely on the belgrano, certainly working with MOD, but not shuffling the whole task off onto them.

Alex, I'm gad to hear that a 22GP team has been established!

The JAR-FCL wording was:

The EASA part-FCL wording states:

So, the CAA could argue that it is up to the Member State, not specifically the NAA, to sort out the 'credit report'.....

No matter - it seems that 22Gp are on the case, which is certainly reassuring.

Beagle,

Is there any truth in the rumour that under EASA rules mil crews operating ac as GAT (mil or civil registered) will need to hold a civil licence?

No.


The EASA 'basic regulation' (216/2008) clearly states:

Thank you very much!

As I understand it, drawing a parallel between all the training and enabling objectives of all military flying courses from EFT all the way through to OCF or equivalent, and the civil training courses forms part of the necessary work to show EASA that military accreditation is plausible. The onward politics once that little lot has been done, well, that's nothing I have any knowledge about.

It's great news that the work is ongoing, but I'm not sure that all the DSAT compliant course paperwork is swept up and in place for all courses in order to make the process (relatively) straightforward. I would imagine that this would provide a grand impetus for a good rodding out of the paperwork side of most trg courses. Not a small job, but not insurmountable, either.

I don't envy those with the job, but am most grateful for their collective efforts in advance! :ok:

It will be interesting to see if the politics of retention cloud the water and remove the common sense system that is currently in place. Let's hope not, eh?

Hi BEagle, the text you quote is from a 'draft draft' of Part-FCL which the CAA are bandying about. EASA will not release this document because they say the wording has not been finalised. I'm a bit cautious about drawing any inferences from the extract without seeing the whole document. It only needs a line in 'Definitions' to say the term 'Member State' is defined as 'the competent Authority of the Member State' and the meaning changes. The draft published by EASA, which I was quoting from memory, says:

I guess we'll have to wait and see...