2 August 2021
I’m really not that person who always complains, but almost every single month the CAA and / or DfT does something that has me holding my head in my hands and wondering just what they’re playing at. I’d like to say that you really couldn’t make it up, but experience is telling me that short-sighted protectionism, jealousy, and the need to sustain a weak and ever-changing regulatory regime in the face of something better has given the CAA and DfT superhuman powers in the ‘making it up’ department.
The latest example is notice that has effectively been given to pilots living in the UK but flying on FAA certificates. Essentially, a badly drafted document (no really), explained that by 21 December 2021, they would have to get themselves CAA licences instead. This applies to all licences and type ratings, but only to those people flying privately.
There’s a bit of history here. EASA has had something similar for years, but it’s been largely dormant thanks to a series of derogations put in place while the EU and US negotiated a licensing annex to the Bilateral Agreement. That’s now been completed, and the current EASA derogation is set to run out in June 2022. Given that we’re no longer an EU member, that agreement does not apply to UK pilots, so the CAA created a derogation to take us until next December.
“I wouldn’t mind if it was safety related, but it isn’t, and never has been”
The question I find myself asking is why? Why pick December ’21 when EASA picked June ’22. In fact, why pick an end date at all? Grant Shapps, our Secretary of State for Transport (and pilot of an N-registered aeroplane) wants the UK to be the best place in the world for General Aviation, but starting out by shafting a large number of FAA licensed pilots seems a strange way to go about it.
You’ll remember that the CAA consulted on the opportunities ahead of us, now that we’re able to make our own rules. You’ll also remember that the biggest message coming out of that consultation was that pretty much everyone wanted the licensing mess that the CAA, JAA and EASA created to be sorted out. You may also remember Sophie O’Sullivan saying that it would not only be doing that very thing as a priority, but that as per the feedback, it’d be looking at the FAA to see what it was doing right! So why then bring in this unnecessary piece of legislation that will see some people having to spend considerable sums of money to continue what they’ve been doing safely for years, while others decide that it’s all too complicated and / or expensive and hang up their headsets as a result. I wouldn’t mind if it was safety related, but it isn’t, and never has been.
So why do people fly N-registered aircraft with FAA licences in the first place? It’s nothing to do (as often suggested) with cheaper maintenance, but has everything to do with a stable and generally more logical and better understood regulatory system. It has to do with wider access to new equipment, thanks to the large number of available STCs (I had Garmin’s autopilot in my N-reg C182 long before it was available under EASA). It also has to do with more accessible post-PPL training, particularly the Instrument Rating, and for some it has to do with more accessible maintenance wherever you are in the world. The FAA is not a flag of convenience, but as someone pointed out, the CAA is certainly a flag of inconvenience.
It has NOTHING to do with safety, but I suspect everything to do with resenting what is, overall, a better system. Yes, it has its flaws, yes, there are areas where EASA does better, and yes, I imagine it must be galling to see people exercising what is currently their right to do something in a better way.
I asked the CAA and the DfT why this decision had been taken. What was motivating the policy, and if there was any data showing that it was a problem that needed fixing? I got a technical reply explaining that something needed to be done thanks to law that we’d copied over from EASA, but I got no insight into why December ’21 had been chosen rather than reverting to how things had always been. Given the ambitious work the CAA is doing on licensing, and given how that is something that will significantly contribute to making us the best place in the world for GA, I think a better solution might have been to wait until that was complete and implemented, surely then, when we’re the best, everyone would have flocked to the CAA system? Given the mess with Cellma, the regulatory change surrounding PMDs, the confusion around theoretical knowledge, not to mention the embarrassment over the Goodwood Drone incident, I suspect the CAA knows that its full-scale overhaul of pilot licensing may not end up being all that world-beating.
The perverse outcome is that from December this year, somebody living in the UK and flying an N-registered aircraft with a current FAA licence and medical will be able to fly that aircraft legally pretty much anywhere in the world – apart from the country in which they live.
CAA and DfT, it’s time for some fresh original thinking…
