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Should the UK CAA drastically simplify the licensing system?

Malibuflyer wrote:

There is no such thing as self declaration in ICAO doc 8984 – therefore PMD and ICAO license are not compatible.

Only if you’re flying internationally. Within a nation’s borders, the CAA can say anything they want.

Andreas IOM

ICAO is for commercial stuff, and airlines mostly

No; ICAO facilitates international flying.

So, if you only ever fly inside 1 country, ICAO is potentially unimportant. But most of the value of GA (for many people, at least) is flying internationally.

Imagine if ICAO or some sort of UN for certification would take care of all licensing world wide. What a dream. Imagine howe much time and money would be saved across the globe by doing so? One license, good for every country. What a dream.

ICAO recommends mutual acceptance (which amounts to the same thing) but politics, sovereignity, job protection, demarcation, etc, have prevented it.

Ban all sub ICAO licenses and sub EASA airplanes from the sky. But it is us, the pilots, who do not want this simplicity!

That is a view which might be popular in certain countries, where regulatory compliance is readily accepted

The problem is that the internationally agreed levels for international flight are a lot higher than those which are safely possible and which could be made available within a country. However, to enable the latter, you do not need a raft of different licenses. You can do it all with one ICAO compliant PPL. You merely have a general regulation published which expands the privileges for non-international flight.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

arj1 wrote:

You mean you’d have to learn how to fly in ANY country? PPL will 150hrs, not 50! ;)

You already can fly in any (ICAO member) country with a (ICAO compliant) PPL. You just have to do it with an aircraft registered in the same state that issued your license.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

There is a clear need to sort out the current licensing mess, but does the CAA have the authority to do so?
Sadly not! In the decades leading up to JAR and EASA the UK Navigation Act allowed the CAA to issue licences as it thought fit. The licences as described in ICAO Annex 1 were placed in a Schedule to the ANO whilst the means of issue was detailed in CAPS 53 and 54.
This system continued to the end of the JAR era but with some restrictioins on the issue of new licences. EASA firmly took control and micromanaged the entire process which effectively overrode the National licensing system, which still remains intact but largely useless.

Boris promised that the UK would take back control of our laws following Brexit, but there was no sign of any attempt to do so, especially as the UK had adopted the UK Withdrawl Act which duplicated every detail of the defunct EASA regulation.

I wrote a letter to the Secretary of State for Transport asking, was Boris a liar, or had the Minister failed to impliment the PMs promise? Of course a PM’s promise is just empty political rhetoric and about as credible as “The Cheque is in the Post.”

I received a reply from the Rt Honourable Robert Courts MP a lawyer by trade who is nominated as the Aviation Minister. I had first seen him give a presentation on a CAA Webinar earlier in the year which indicated that aviation was not his subject.

His response was both verbose and eloquent worth 10/10 for presentation, but sadly barely worth 1/10 for content. I will attach two relavent paragraphs here:

We continue to explore further simplification with the CAA and will consider whether there is scope to make organisation approvals valid under both the retained EU legislation and the ANO.
Taking a longer term view, developing a single regulatory regime will require primary legislation, under an Act of Parliament, and as a large undertaking is inevitably some time away__

This reveals that any changes are a long way away, whilst the reference to the need for an Act of Parliament shows little understanding of the existing ANO or the process, we have sucessfully followed for decades!

In the lead up to Brexit there appears to have been little work done, the CAA had clearly hoped to continue as before whilst Grant Shapps appears to have had his personal agenda. The CEO Haines largely filleted the CAA of its knowledgebase in the quest to save money and the previous person in the Chair seems to have done nothing more than sit in it. As Brexit loomed, Shapps’s lawyers took over, the CAA are now just the office boys and the mess we now have is down to the intransigence of Shapps’s department, a man once sacked for bullying!

Last Edited by Tumbleweed at 11 Apr 12:55

Airborne_Again wrote:

You already can fly in any (ICAO member) country with a (ICAO compliant) PPL. You just have to do it with an aircraft registered in the same state that issued your license.

Indeed, that should work for every country EXCEPT North Korea and country where you are based: you need a local license (e.g. say it’s an N-reg aircraft flown by UK by based operator in UK), what a farce

Malibuflyer wrote:

There is no such thing as self declaration in ICAO doc 8984 – therefore PMD and ICAO license are not compatible. Should CAA now reduce complexity or increase complexity open the way for a recreational license sub ICAO standards without a medical examination (knowing that such licenses are always a national thing…).

It’s a very sensible topic in UK, don’t forget many oldies are still around with us and they can fly better & safer than those with Class2 according to stats, on the positive side that is one thing where the UK CAA did a far greater job than many other countries (well FAA now got BasicMed, since 2017 and 70k pilots are using it, it’s even accepted by Bahams)

Maybe it’s time to change doc 8984?

Last Edited by Ibra at 11 Apr 13:24
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

but does the CAA have the authority to do so?

Sounds like they do but they don’t know it because most people have left, leaving just the “fake MBA” types who do risk assessments

To give them a tiny bit of credit, my take is that the CAA has been hoping to do some mutual deal with EASA, and that requires brown-nosing them (EASA) considerably; a process which is not helped by the UK doing too much good stuff internally, which then shows EASA in a bad light.

should work for every country EXCEPT North Korea and country where you are based

Most of the 3rd world requires overflight permits etc. The “license + aircraft reg → worldwide noncommercial privileges” works only for civilised countries.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Tumbleweed wrote:

There is a clear need to sort out the current licensing mess, but does the CAA have the authority to do so?

@Tumbleweed, I doubt that! As far as I’m aware, the CAA are just an outsourcing company for the UK DfT. So DfT should be able to do that but they are interested in what “industry” wants, and we are not that.
If I’m not mistaken, the license review “project” does not have an end date, so it could literally take forever.

EGTR

so it could literally take forever.

Don’t disregard the possibility of UK rejoining EASA in next 10 years (not the EU)

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Ibra wrote:

so it could literally take forever.

Don’t disregard the possibility of UK rejoining EASA in next 10 years (not the EU)

I doubt the Tory will do anything with EU. Or did you mean if Labour comes to power? I wouldn’t exclude the possibility of joining either! :)

EGTR

If the CAA was working towards some bilateral treaty with EASA, they would definitely delay doing anything “too good” within the UK. It would be provocative.

It’s like, post divorce, the man must not look like he is having too much fun – if he wants access to the kids without too much hassle Or, more currently, you can’t have Ukraine as a relatively well-off country with, wait for it, people having WASHING MACHINES!!!!!! while Motherland Russia has still got scrubbers (no, I mean this kind of scrubber) for these.

OTOH, dropping the UK national PPL has no downside that I can see. For a start, you cannot apply for it initially unless you hold a Class 2 medical.

Running the LAPL (even if nobody was training or operating it) would be a perfectly sensible pragmatic brown-nosing of Cologne, because if EASA was re-joined in some way, they would want the UK to adopt the LAPL.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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