Moi,

FAA ATPL holder (meeting full ICAO requirements) wishes to work in Finland & live with the Finnish side of family.

Any of you kind Suomilainen have knowledge of actual cases where, Finnish aviation authority VALIDATED a FAA ATP and granted a Finnish ATPL to that individual?
(Thus bypassing the JAA “training and written exams as required".)


There appears to be regulations to enable this (see below), but has it been done in the real world in FINLAND?

"High time pilots and exceptions for JAA conversion:
The major exception to the fourteen exams is that all JAA countries stand free to validate any other ICAO license they wish. However your JAA ATPL is then considered a national license and is only valid for the country where it was validated."

Cheers!

They are not know to do this. Finnish CAA has the brain capacity of an ameba. You are much better off by doing what ever is needed in Sweden. They will give you a chance to do all the exams based on the FAA ATPL after an assesment. The required amount of exams is 14. Once again the whole exam procedure in Sweden (Hurrit know something) is much more relaxed and lets put it nicely: Down to earth.

Finland will not issue a "National" or an JAA ATPL with a restriction to OH registered airplanes only like UK CAA does, because they do not have to. I know someone who has looked into this and he said that it was like banging your head against a brick wall. You might as well have tried to teach a horse to play Mozart.

You can PM me if you want the Email address for this gent who has all the details.

I can second what JJ is saying. By all means try to get a validation but don't hold your breath. The finnish CAA have a unique and inflexible interpretation of JAA regulations. They are an awkward bunch of people to deal with even for fairly straight forward matters. If you don't have any luck with the validation and decide to go for the conversion route I would recommend doing it in almost any other JAA state.

JJ and wiseguy,

Thanks for the straight forward reply.

This friend of mine is a Falcon 2000EX corporate guy, thinking that with his command experience, he may be able to step across the Atlantic with a NetJets Europe gig. I thought he (and his Finnish wife) may be a bit optimistic when he first heard about these "National" license validation arrangements (e.g. Ryanair). I'd say he is past his prime to be properly motivated for 14 JAA exams.

On the other hand, it is puzzling why the Finnish CAA holds such a hardline position.

Kiitos.


P.S. Best wishes on keeping Malmi open!

Cheers 74,

If its netjets your friend is interested in then it would be better to get in touch with the portuguese authorities or even better get in touch directly with netjets europe. All netjets aircraft in europe are registered in portugal. If they were to offer a validation to your friend he would still be able to live in Finland and fly netjets aircraft all around europe! Assuming of course he has the right to live and work in the EU. Good luck.

Actually, the UK may be a better route -- I've understood NetJets has a good deal if not all their employment contracts through their UK branch. And anyone working under UK employment contract, even if residing elsewhere in Europe, can justify UK as their country of JAA license issue.

Whether Netjets do that because the UK CAA is among the more flexible ones as to conversions, I'm not sure, but suspect this has something to do with it.

Just my 2 cts...