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FAA to JAA

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buckman

Active member
Joined
Apr 28, 2002
Posts
27
Can anyone give me some information on transfering FAA ratings to JAA in order to fly in Europe?
I plan on getting my ATP and working with a regional for a while and then trying to transfer overseas when I am qualified to go to a major airline.
Thanks for any info!

Buckman
 
The website will tell you, have fun it is not an easy task. You can be a temp. cert. if the air carrier sponsers you but the real one takes almost a year.
 
Good Luck

Buckman,

You're about to find out there is no justice in this world. Simply put in the JAA world your FAA certificates and ratings don't count. Neither does your flight time.

Even if you have an FAA ATP, you will have to do all 14 ground school exams. You may get exempted from Nav Aids but it changes on a monthly basis, so I'm not sure about that particular point. Whatever you end up doing will be more work than you thought was possible. If you plan to fly here for a while and can't afford to take the 12 months most ground school courses take. Try one of the distance learning courses run by PPSC, Bristol flight school or Oxford air training.

Once you done that, you have to do a commercial flight test and and instrument rating flight test. Remeber in Europe the CPL flight test is the equivalent of an ATP checkride here. In other words you'll get a "frozen" ATPL which becomes "un-frozen" when you get the hours. The training for this can be done in the US as well as the checkride. Although I think you have to have passed the first 7 ground exams.


Now, the instrument rating training can be done in the US, but there are only 3-4 places that are approved to do it. And I'm pretty sure the rule was changed 12 months ago to say that you have to do a 55 hour course regardless of previous experience. You cannot take the initial instrument rating checkride in anything other than European airspace. So' you'd have to go there to do it.

If you decide to go to somewhere like the UK to do the ground school and flying you'll be looking at $25-30,000 to convert you FAA certificates.

I did it a year ago and it was a complete nightmare. On a more positive note the airlines, especially the smaller regionals are starting to hire and your chances of flying a nice big Boeing or Airbus with 1000 hours is fairly good. In fact two friends of mine have just been hired with Ryanair to fly the 737-800 with only 250 hours a piece.

like I said GOOD LUCK.....
 

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