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Switzerland requires permit on all foreign ultralights (and other countries doing similar stuff)

People are involved in aviation accidents because they have way too little training / currency. I teach around 150 to 200 hours a year both in certified and uncertified aircraft, and you can just believe me when I tell you that pilots skills usually have little to do with regulations or the type of license a pilot holds.

Very plausible. However, the fault clearly lies at the national member states. I fully agree every plane registered anywhere in EU should be allowed to fly and park without limits anywhere in the union.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Certification, and all that comes with that, is quite simply the price we pay under the ICAO treaty, for easy international flight privileges.

One may not like it but it is what we have.

If it was not for ICAO, GA would be banned in most of the ~200 countries in the world. It would be banned because in any half respectable dictatorship it is a totally unacceptable personal privilege. Even in Europe, only a few of the ~30 countries would have GA today. I could post my view on which ones would not have it

And if you think that one could have even just a pan-European “special regime”, well, that would be great because for most Europe is a big enough place to fly around, but no way will that happen, given the nationalism just within Europe (just read some posts on EuroGA for a taster) where it is hard to agree on whether the sun shines. Then you get the empire building inside every CAA. They could not even agree on frequency allocation, hence the totally mad 8.33 “solution”. Then you get the professional pilot (airline) unions, and the FTO industry, working hard under the table to block any significant relaxation of the IR, and you pretty well need the IR for long distance flying – as well as an aircraft suitable for flight in IMC, etc… at this point the discussion usually moves to why the US has such a healthy GA community

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

MichaLSA wrote:

By definition and birth reason, UL/Microlight class was founded outside of ‘central governments’ = no jurisdiction there. IMHO the countries should cancel the whole Microlight idea and introduce a decent homebuilt/experimental category inside EASA to re-unite the fighting tribes

Absolutely.

Thomas_R wrote:

It does not make any sense at all that I am allowed to fly internationally with a 60 years old run-down C150 but not with a brand shining new WT9 sporting a stellar performance and bleeding edge avionics. It does not make any sense that I can happily fly at night in the aforementioned decrepit Cessna while I’m not allowed to do that in an all-EFIS microlight which is additionally equipped with a BRS. It does not make any sense that I can fly to France with a 10 year old 472,5kg WT9 (which I really like) but not with a newer 600kg version of the same airplane. Both are structurally more or less identical.

“Making sense” has nothing to do with it.

Just think back how the whole mess came to be. Before JAR and EASA, each country was cooking it’s own soup, yet most airplane were either certified or experimental. In certified aviation, you were basically allowed to take your airplane everywhere, based on ICAO’s principle of freedom of flight. Experimentals needed permissions from most countries, even though some had bilateral agreements accepting the others certifications. In terms of licenses, you had to have licences or validations for each country you operated in.

In the 1980ties and 90ties, whn JAR and EASA were concieved, rules went overboard and made certified aviation unattractive and expensive. The same happened in the US, where certified airplanes became viciously expensive due to regulation, certification and product liability cost.

So people were looking for a way out. In the US, the experimental scene, which had established rules already, started to thrive. In Europe, the result was the UL scene, starting out with some flying delta gliders and similar, which were regulated nationally. Seeing that this kind of certification was easier to fulfill, loads of manufacturers and pilots jumped on the bandwagon and created a scene which is neither fish nor bird so to speak: They created airplanes and shoehorned them into the arbitrary weight restrictions the countries had come up with to stay out of the certified regulation burden. Their goal WAS and IS to stay out of EASA! Hence, it is no wonder that they need to be regulated nationally.

The result was airplanes which would actually belong into the certified world where they could be used to their full capacity but are castrated into the UL limitations which causes lots of them to be operated at the fringe of their limitations all the time.

Basically, the UL scene today is in a similar situation we had prior to FCL and EASA. Licenses are purely valid nationally and regulations what is allowed and what not is also nationally regulated. Hence it is pretty normal that countries which more restrictive rules won’t allow it’s citizens to go flag of convenience or otherwise circumnavigate that rule. The 525 vs 600 kg debate shows this: France has 525 kg for their own people, so how should it allow German UL’s with 600 kg MTOW into it’s airspace without getting their own people angry?

Therefore I fully agree with @MichaeLSA: the only way to get those airplanes into a legal frame for most of Europe is to finally put them under the umbrella of EASA, either with a new cathegory or under the ELA 1/Part NCO regulations and LAP licencing. This would do away with most of the weight regulations, finally allowing proper flying without being overweight all the time, it would allow those airplanes to get into the training market, e.t.c. where loads of ancient airplanes need replacing.

clearly, this is not going to be met with enthusiasm by the folks who wish to fly with papers any flight school can issue and without medicals, but possibly on the licensing level something could be done there to accomodate that, rather than on the airplane level.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 06 Feb 15:23
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

What has actually changed in the 22 years I’ve been flying is enforcement.

In the old days there wasn’t any. No UK GAR form. No Immigration checks in France; Brits could fly anywhere in France directly. No replies to permit requests from Spain, so people “just flew” (as they do today, actually).

I have been told that some people don’t like these discussions, because they say it draws CAA attention. Well, it’s a balance… Those who have a plane and know how to game the system want to keep it quiet. The others, arguably, have a duty to inform those who are about to part with 100k+ and not know the limitations. The salesman isn’t gonna be telling them, is he? Then there are loads who live in a total denial (but they usually don’t fly very far).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Their goal WAS and IS to stay out of EASA!

Their goal was to stay out of certification. Today, arguably, the situation would be better if EASA could agree on common rules for UL instead of each country making its own. Same for the rest of Annex I.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Mooney_Driver wrote:

“Making sense” has nothing to do with it.

Maybe we should all try to think a little bit more in terms of what makes sense again instead of being exegetes for the intricacies of the history, development, and current structure of a rule body which appears to have an autoreferential justification for its own existence.

Germany

Same for the rest of Annex I.

Then you would prevent great concessions like this.

Such medical concessions (France is the other one I know about, with no medical at all for UL, within France) are worth arguably more than any other deregulation, because a very large % of those who drop out do so due to loss of medical.

Politically, the quid pro quo for UL and Annex 1 is that IFR is (generally) not possible, so the airline unions and other vested interests are placated by the de facto absence of these airspace users from the “professional pilot airspace”. That is the deal in Europe. That is not the deal in the US and that’s a key factor why US GA is so much bigger. Well, along with Europe using the IR as the “pro pilot” hallmark (and there is no course of study leading to an ATP, which you are given after you have flattened your bum over 500hrs in Part 25 and have 1500hrs TT), while the US uses the ATP for that. Same old stuff debated so many times, but you can’t separate it out, because European regulatory politics has wrapped it all up together. It’s just like wrapping up the UK IMCR with “no Class A” – exactly the same political quid pro quo.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

As far as I know the latest commotion has it’s origin in the change of maximum allowable take off weight which was a justified effort to attack the chronic overweight situation UL’s were notorious for. France decided on 500kg (525 with BRS) and Germany and others went for 600kg. Before that, France gave out permissions fairly easily, now they apparently are digging in their heels because their own UL population sais either we get 600 kg as well or nobody will on the territory of France.

Remember when each country had their own ideas about what is required for IFR? Not that this has changed (the ideas) but Part NCO has put the European Foot down and now they can have ideas but can’t enforce them.

Hence, i think the only way to sort out the UL mess is to get it regulated on EASA level rather than nationally.

It should also not be forgotten that the original idea of UL’s was very different than what is trying to squeeze into that segment today. The original UL’s were mostly motorized delta gliders and similar vehicles. IMHO, the main problem is that due to the massive certification costs and the fact that they also can’t be sold as experimentals, loads of manufacturers went the UL “non certified” way rather than doing a full certification. There are notable exceptions such as Pipistrel who sell some of their planes in UL and others in LSA category.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

justified effort to attack the chronic overweight situation UL’s were notorious for.

You mean… like C150 C152 C172 PA28 which if flown 2- 2- 4- 4-up anytime after around 1945 are over MTOW

sort out the UL mess is to get it regulated on EASA level rather than nationally.

You mean… a political under the table deal driven by the major EASA participants and settling on the worst common denominator

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

You mean… a political under the table deal driven by the major EASA participants and settling on the worst common denominator

Shush! :)
That’s called consensus.

EGTR
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