gallois wrote:
After a flight test eg Instrumant rating the examiner goes online enters your pass along with his qualifications.
Are you sure that this isn’t just for class rating revalidations? I’ve never heard of this for an initial instrument rating.
But the main keyword in my post being “abroad”. There is no SIGEBEL in that case and you have to wait for your papers.
Like everything to do with Flight Crew Licensing, Europe would be SO much better if we just copied the FAA in every detail. For example:
Here in the UK we have been hearing about the Red Tape Challenge for years and years, under which this whole area is supposed to improve. But not a Bl@@dy thing ever changes.
Utterly pathetic.
@Buckerfan I could not agree more!
@Rwy20 I can’t answer the “abroad” question as I have no experience of that.
From personal experience I flew a DA42 IFR the day after my MEIR flight test. All the information.about the test and my pass was uploaded to SIGIBEL during my debriefing. My PPL licence was signed as to include the MEIR and signed by the examiner at the same time IIRC.
The same thing had hppened a couple of days before when I passed my SEIR.
Croatian CAA issues license immediately. After the skill test you get complete paperwork from examiner, you take it to CAA and pick up your license the same day or the day after. It seems that this is the first thing that our bureaucracy is faster than others. The same us with any type rating and revalidation/extension. I heard of few days delays if training is done in foreign facility or examiner is from foreign country. The worst is transferring license – two weeks.
The other thing the UK CAA (and maybe others) is doing is demanding that you send them a certified copy of your license. This is the same one they have just issued you with! The only reason I can see for this bizzare practice is to pick up where somebody wrote “ATPL” on theirs and with a fake signature 
The staff is illiterate too. Just seen an email where they address a male license holder as female and with a mis-spelt name. These people must be on 35k just for (what used to be called) a “typist”. Care=0. The problem is that nobody can do anything about anybody because they can just say they are LGBT and collect 50k for unfair dismissal 
Peter wrote:
The other thing the UK CAA (and maybe others) is doing is demanding that you send them a certified copy of your license. This is the same one they have just issued you with! The only reason I can see for this bizzare practice is to pick up where somebody wrote “ATPL” on theirs and with a fake signature
I think that is in case you’ve got your rating extended by FI and the paperwork did not make it to CAA.
They are routinely using this to delay the issuance of a new license or a license with a new rating.
If an FI-only issue of something didn’t make it to the CAA, and they later issued a license without it, I think most pilots would spot it It would be a rare case, anyway.
Peter wrote:
If an FI-only issue of something didn’t make it to the CAA, and they later issued a license without it, I think most pilots would spot it It would be a rare case, anyway.
“covering their backsides”? Oh, sorry, I stand corrected – of course, this a quality management measure! :)
Peter wrote:
The other thing the UK CAA (and maybe others) is doing is demanding that you send them a certified copy of your license. This is the same one they have just issued you with! The only reason I can see for this bizzare practice
My assumption on why they always ask for full details, copies of licences etc (essentially a load of stuff they should already be able to bring up at the touch of a button) has always been that their database(s) have been a real mess since forever.
They are probably simultaneously working from a load of old paper records and probably more than one failed attempt to computerise them, as well as whatever current system they’re in and perhaps a lot of excel files where they’ve tried a few times to get everything together in one common format.
Getting someone’s full details each time they interact is probably a tool to try and fill in the gaps. Each time you send something in it’s probably having four copies taken and each of those copies being put into a different data entry queue to ensure a different system gets your record added or at least checked for consistency.
