Bureaucracy at its best
 

This is NOT another bitch session or please feel sorry for me post but rather a call for flight crew to band together and stand up to the bureaucracy of EASA. I've been flying since I was sixteen and have been working in the airline industry for the last twelve years. My qualifications are that I hold an ICAO ATPL with over 8500 hours on various jets and prop aircraft. Like many of you out there I lost my job due to COVID thanks to the vast layoffs that took place. My family and I now live in Europe and I started with the license conversion process that as some of you might all know, requires you " as a qualified professional with years of flying experience" to sit and write all 13 ATPL subjects. Now before all you bureaucrat's reading this go on the defensive. I wrote all the thirteen exams and as I'm not an academic pilot and have a family and other financial responsibilities It took me a few attempts more than others but unfortunately I ran out of attempts and had only two left but was told that I need to rewrite all thirteen examinations. This makes my blood boil as WHY in the first place does a qualified professional need to be placed in a category along with pilots that are starting their career. I can understand if a license authority would like you to write air law, procedures and pass a skills test but holding an ICAO license with years of flying experience and been made to run the gauntlet to say is something that needs to change. So I ask myself what is the point of ICAO? It's meant to be this governing body that puts it's stamp on countries aviation authorities, approving their procedures and confirming their compliance to world standards.
Once again some of you will say" but" its for job security of the individual countries, well that's just BS as without a valid work permit or residence you can't work or live there anyway.
Its time to change this.

Why?
What you are going through is almost exactly what I went through about three decades ago.
I got on with it. I also had "a family and other financial responsibilities". I spent every evening studying after the kids had gone to bed. For six months. And passed them all.
(By the way, in South Africa you "write" exams, in the rest of the world you "sit" exams,)
Just put the effort in and get on with it.
And good luck next time.

It’s simply the normal game. You want to get an FAA license? Pass the FAA written and aural exam. You want to fly in China? Again, pass the full license examination. Same in Europe. In the end it is just studying a lot for a few months, pass and move on.

i can understand the frustration, but in the end there is nothing but concentrating and working hard, same as all others that want to join a certain aviation market have to do. Is the EASA system perfect? Hell no, bit it is the system in place, arrange yourself with it or move on, no rant in the world is going to change that system.

The whole point of being an experienced pilot is that all the exams should be much easier as you, supposedly, already have much of the knowledge required. Not the other way around as you seem to imply. Buckle down, get it done.

Probably easier just to pass the exams.

EASA, or any other Civil Aviation Authority has nothing to do with "job security" and they just take care about regulations and licensing. As you already know, you can get an EASA license and still not be able to work in Europe without being an EU citizen or having a valid work permit.
I fully understand your frustration and no, it is not fair having to sit for all the exams again when you already passed some but those are the rules ( and a source of money I guess ) in whatever country you´re trying to get the EASA license. I don´t know if these rules are somehow different -or more flexible- in other EASA countries but what I do know is that trying to change the system it´s useless. Cooperate and graduate. Try to get some time, use some of those apps that will help you to prepare the exams and go for it.
Good Luck.