The European Aviation Safety Agency has effectively been given a job it doesn't want and isn't qualified for: to teach the USA a lesson in the principles of free trade. That isn't quite the way the European Commission would put it, but European Union basic regulations and the EC's ambitions have pushed EASA into a corner as it prepares to reframe the existing JAR FCL - the rules defining the European flightcrew licensing process - as EU law.
EASA's recent release of the notice of proposed amendment on FCL, which includes the requirements that must be met by flight training organisations and type rating training organisations that want to be approved to train to EU FCL, has caused the entire European training industry deep concern. Foreign-owned type rating training organisations that operate in Europe are also worried because they expect that the rules - which in their case have not yet been finalised - will require instructor qualifications well beyond existing ones. This could be unfeasible, damaging their businesses and the service they provide to European airlines and business aviation.
And for what? The US pilot training industry, at present, gets a lot of business from Europe, and the European industry gets no business from the USA. The business America gets from Europe includes training pilots in the USA for parts of their European pilot licence qualifications. Under the proposed rule, the USA would lose that business because there would be new licensing requirements for US instructors. Individual instructors would not benefit from these additional qualifications, so they would take their expertise elsewhere at a time when hiring and retaining instructors is a major problem for everyone. The same may apply at foreign-owned type rating training organisations based in Europe.
This is, at least partly, a stick with which to beat Washington to try to get it to sign a bilateral training agreement with Europe. In theory that is understandable, but in practice it is either not going to work at all or not for a long time. But in the meantime, European flight training organisations will lose the instructors and their training capacity in the USA, which will leave an unfillable gap in their training resources. At a time when there is a global shortage of pilots, Europe should have the capacity to serve its own needs for airline pilots and continue to win training business from all over the non-American world. The EASA notice of proposed amendment, in its present form, will have precisely the opposite effect.
Source: Flight International
