Well thats all as clear as mud then ,my guess in reality is the only answer would have to come from an American court of law.I certainly wouldn,t want to go there in the so called "land of the free" .I believe when they throw the book at you over there its with considerable force.Its a good job aeroplanes only understand the laws of physics and money !!.

Capt Airprox

Current means that it is current at the time of application for the Pilot Certificate. A licence can be current without being valid! i.e. the basic licence is within its validity period but the ratings in it may not be valid.

FAR 61.19 says the foreign licence must be "effective" not sure if that translates to current or valid in all respects. Even an expired licence can be effective for swatting flies!

As the question of FAA interpretation of their own FARs is now under question, I think I will head over to the FAA building at Sun n Fun next week and run it by those guys. I will report back what they say!

Unfortunately, the FAA are not always consistent in how they interpret their own rules.

A couple of months ago, I started a thread (or maybe hijacked one, I don't remember :D ) about flying solo at night on an FAA license based on my UK license. I didn't have a night qualification on my UK license, but had completed all the dual night flying required by the FARs for solo flight at night.

The answers about whether it was legal were split pretty much 50/50, so I decided to read up in the FARs for a definitive answer. According to the FARs, it is not legal. You can add a rating to a license based on a foreign license, but the definition of a rating is limited to an IR, type rating or class rating.

I told the instructors at the school where I was renting from, and they were surprised - they said they'd had plenty of British students who'd met the dual night flying requirements and then gone on to fly solo at night. But I pointed out the relevant FARs, and was met with "Hmmm, interesting" noises.

The cheif instructor, who is also an FAA examiner, had an examiners meeting coming up a few days after I mentioned this to him, so he took the opportunity to raise the issue with one of the FAA's head training guys. The official line from this guy was that it's not strictly legal, but everyone does it and no one really seems to mind. The FARs will probably be changed some day to allow it, but since everyone does it already, no one really seems to be bothered about changing the FARs.

After talking to the instructors, I decided to get an FAA student license, and use that for all my night solo flying just to ensure it was completely legal. But on some points, what the FARs say, what the FAA say, and what everyone else says may not be the same! :rolleyes: This sounds like one of these scenarios, and if it were me, I'd make sure that I had a FAA BFR and a UK CofE just to make sure I was completely legal...

FFF
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Yep, best to have a BFR. I was told by an FAA Examiner when I did my IR check ride that I was not legal as I had no BFR logged in my logbook. Stupid really as I had just flow about 50 hrs with an instructor for my IR...how much checking do I need! Needless to say the instructor just endorsed my logbook there and then.

This point about night flying...it seems the only real way to fly at night and carry passengers is to either get an FAA CPL (or take the PPL tests and exams...waste of time) or to get a JAA NR (Qualification) on the JAA licence...probably easiest.

Cheers
EA

I flew happily in the USA for many years on a US PPL issued on the basis of my CAA PPL, and made sure that every bit of the CAA PPL was valid as well.

Eventually, I succumbed and did the teeny bit of flying and the checkride to get an unrestricted FAA PPL. I also did the IR to go with it. I feel a lot happier having an unrestricted FAA PPL/IR, since nothing CAA or JAA gets to me any more.

For those who have reasonable numbers of hours, I'd recommend doing the FAA PPL checkride. If you have LOTS of hours and the time to do a long cross-country (SOLO) and some minor performance manoeuvres, do the FAA CPL. Neither is particularly difficult.