This Opinion addresses a harmonisation issue related to flight crew licensing requirements. The objective of this Opinion is to ensure that non-controversial issues related to the flight crew licence format are timely addressed, thereby providing alignment with the relevant International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs).
Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 (the ‘Basic Regulation’) requires the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to assist Member States (MSs) in fulfilling their obligations under the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention) by providing a basis for a common interpretation and uniform implementation of the Convention requirements, and by ensuring that these requirements are duly taken into account in this Regulation and in the implementing rules (IRs) established for their implementation. In this context, the ICAO SARPs for the flight crew licensing requirements are proposed to be incorporated into Annex I (Part-FCL) and Appendix I to Annex VI (Part-ARA) to Regulation (EU) No 1178/2011 (the ‘Aircrew Regulation’).
This Opinion, developed by EASA in accordance with Article 15 of the Management Board (MB) Decision No 18-2015, proposes amendments to Part-FCL and Part-ARA, by introducing new requirements regarding the automatic validation of flight crew licences in accordance with the ICAO Annex 1 SARPs, applicable as of 9 November 2017.
The proposed changes will ensure that flight crew licences issued by one MS are automatically rendered valid by the other MS parties to the Regional Safety Oversight Organizations’ (RSOOs) agreement that is registered with ICAO.
