My understanding (but I don’t have proper legal references, and don’t have time to look that up) is that you can fly a G or N … aircraft in France either with a UK license for a G aircraft or FAA license for a N aircraft or with a French license. The caveat is for flying to say Germany, you can only do that with the UK or FAA license, not with the French license, despite the fact Germany and France use EASA licenses… So in principle to fly it from France to Germany you would need both French and German licenses… but then you would not be able to fly to Italy or Spain…
In short, if you only plan to fly it in France for a while, you should be fine with your French license only. If you want to travel outside France, you will need to either take a UK license or re-register the aircraft to a French registration.
Peter wrote:
If OTOH you published the letter here (perhaps with your name removed) that would be a different thing. You would also need to publish the text of your question, to which they have responded.
It is not me who asked the question and got the answer. Therefore I am not allowed to publish this. However my initial question is related to other countries positions as to flying a G-registered aircraft:
The mechanic where I hangar my plane has a G-reg TB10 (not his you’re planning to buy by any chance?) and I guess a French license. I can ask him, though I’m not sure he flies it since Brexit.
Very quick answer from him, sadly not what you wanted to hear. He says that post-Brexit it’s impossible to fly G-reg in France without a UK license. Of course he may not be right, but that’s what he says.
johnh wrote:
He says that post-Brexit it’s impossible to fly G-reg in France without a UK license
A 28-day validation may be used. Art 8(3) in Regulation (EU) 2020/723. It requires only an acclimatisation (training) flight with a UK CRI/FI, a foreign licence verification and an application to UK CAA. Forms SRG 2141 and 2142.
It is not me who asked the question and got the answer. Therefore I am not allowed to publish this
You should ask him if he is willing to do something useful for GA.
The DGAC would have fully expected publication of such a letter.
It depends who and where in the DGAC has written the email. Was it central DGAC which is more an overseer now or was it someone from one of the DSAC’s.
The other question might be who is responsible for licencing/ permissions to fly in a G reg.? Would it really be the DGAC or would it be the UK CAA?
The UK CAA states that UK papers are required for a G-reg, but since e.g. France is outside UK jurisdiction, France is able to allow French papers within its airspace and there is nothing the UK can do about it even if it wanted to.
IOW, in the acquiescence of the airspace owner, the State of Registry decides on the required pilot papers, but the airspace owner is free to authorise additional privileges.
It depends who and where in the DGAC has written the email
It is up to any organisation to make sure that only competent people operate at the customer interface. This is because – in any country with a functioning justice system – a member of the public has a reasonable expectation of receiving correct advice. Getting this right is indeed hard, but hey this is why we elect such amazingly clever people to govern over us 
As I said above, the DGAC enquirer should also publish the question he asked – unless it is obvious from the reply. For example, the FAA Chief Counsel generally includes the essence of the question in his replies.
I do know that it was not a problem to own and fly a G reg on a French licence without problem and without being restricted to France. Some friends here used to operate a G reg Arrow and it was perfectly legal. So one has to ask whether or not the email was sent before the UK decided to go it alone or after the cut off date.
The 2nd question would be whether that cutoff made any difference to licencing as it did to the aircraft residence? I can not find anything in DGAC regs regarding this. But I also cannot find anything in DGAC regs that says someone cannot fly an N reg on French papers. I may of course have just missed it.
