F/O Job at EU
 

Hello, I am wondering if an FAA pilot needs the EASA license to fly a N registered aircraft in the EU. Does anyone know?

That depends, there are too many variables for an outright yes/no answer.

• Private or Commercial
• EU Citizen/resident or not

For instance if you are a EU passport holder and you fly N-reg in Commercial operations for a US based company you don’t need an EU-license.
If you are a EU passport holder and resident and you want to fly your privately owned N-reg in private operations you do need an EU-license.
That “loophole” was closed 12-15(?) years ago.

*So…..we’ll need a little more information about what exactly you are asking.

Not up to date but it used to be dead simple. Wherever the aircraft was registered , you needed that country's licence to fly it.

Licencing is standards. Once you have your PPL, CPL, SCPL, ATP etc, you are qualified to exercise the privilages of the licence.

Climb into anything with registration, you need that country's issuing licence to fly it anywhere..

In general still somewhat true. Just not within Europe. With any EASA license i can fly planes registered in any EASA member state. And yes, that does include some non-EU countries.

And countries, or regulatory entities in this case, can enforce additional rules even on foreign registered aircraft based in their area.

B2N2 made some good points.

I wonder where you stand in a third country flying (for example) a D-reg on an Irish licence. Just because EASA members recognise each other's licences does it mean everyone else has to?

My EASA licence was issued by the Dutch authorities, medical by the Maltese authorities. Aircraft is registered in Portugal. I hold a British passport....

It happens all the time. I'm just wondering what would happen if you got ramp checked somewhere in Asia and your licence didn't match your registration. What is the legal standing of EASA within the ICAO and what are the practical implications of EASA being a standard and not actually issuing licences or registering Airplanes. It obviously happens 1000 times a day so there can't be too many problems.

It caused a few issues in the beginning. And EASA adopted a regulation to cover it and a .pdf form in 2018 to show during a ramp check. It hasn't been updated and therefore still shows the UK as one of the participating states...

https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/def..._Issue%202.pdf