The Hague Apostille Certified US flying hours in Europe

[flying free.LEVC]

Good evening, a few months ago I was in the States doing some time building and I just learnt that EASA requires these hours to be certified by the Hague Apostille. Could anybody tell me how this works? The only stamp I got on my logbook from the school was after doing the initial flight review exam, but nothing else.

I wish I had known this at the time.

[Larpa3Q]

Apparently in Spain (I don't think all EASA CAA's require it), every document issued outside Europe should be autenticated with the Hague Apostille. This seems to be 'necessary' because the spanish CAA cannot check if the hours were actually flown (while in spain the authority can check the technical logbooks of the airplanes to cross-check)

This is a two steps process:

1. The instructor signs the hours certificate (a document that states that you flown X hours, Y as Dual, Z as PIC, etc), with a notary.
2. You bring the notarized document to the department of state, and it verifies that the notary was valid, and issues the apostille.

Has anyone else gone through this? Unfortunately I have 45 hours flown in the U.S. that are not valid in Spain until I got the apostille (which is unlikely because the u.s. school does not bother to go to the notary service).

Does anyone know an alternative to this?

[rudestuff]

Never heard of it. The UK CAA just wanted to see my logbooks.

[banjodrone]

The cynic in me says it sounds like another spanner in the works to throw people off the idea of training and building overseas but I guess it might have some rationale if reasonable suspicions have been raised about people cramming their logbooks with questionable hours willy nilly. Never heard of it until now and the school I went to 8 years ago in California is closed now lol.

[Gabijl]

Any update

Hi all,

im in Spain and I’m trying to convert my license. They say my hours need to be legalized, wanted to know what did you guys do for this?

thanks
gabijl