AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2019 - 90

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THE AUTHOR'S European travels

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took him to such scenic locales
as the foothills of the Pyrenees
in Catalunya, Spain (p. 88), and
Interlaken, Switzerland.

90 | AOPA PILOT March 2019

exams were done. That left arranging to
pay an examiner to come from the United
Kingdom to my home airport to handle the
English exam, radio exam, and checkride,
none of which was too terrible, especially as
the weather stayed nice in winter.
That completed, I embarked on a
5-month process of extensive interaction
with the CAA, sending mountains of paperwork and forms back and forth, ultimately
finding that the U.K. CAA is at the moment
in a state of disarray. Many items had to
be chased through a bureaucratic nightmare, finally resulting in the issuance of my
European private pilot license an astonishing five months after the checkride.
In all, the process took 16 months, and
cost $4,061; it involved three airline flights,
and activities in three countries. Only a
few hours of cost involved time piloting
an airplane, with the rest related to machinations of paperwork, travel, and onerous
fees. The most challenging part was that no
single party had an answer on how to proceed, leaving more detective work than I
ever imagined to ensure legal compliance.
It is, however, powerful to have the freedom
to operate local aircraft in an additional 32
countries.
AOPA
GARRETT FISHER has published 16 books. He

blogs about his experiences in his Piper Cub
for AOPA Opinion Leaders (http://blog.aopa.
org) and his own (www.garrettfisher.me).

GARRETT FISHER

checkride, and other requirements must be
completed under U.K. certification. Only
with the final license in hand does interoperability kick in. With that in mind, I found
a school 500 miles away in Spain that
operated under U.K. rules, and began corresponding to arrange the next steps. I found
out some new requirements: I would need a
radiotelephony operator's license, certification to speak English, and I would also need
to take a third written exam.
While all of this cost more, it was particularly byzantine to try to coordinate all
the steps, as many different parties were
involved. As one could expect, I asked
until I was blue in the face about my FCC
Radiotelephone Operators Permit, the fact I
am a native English speaker, the fact that the
FAA license indicates "English proficient,"
and the fact that I have a current commercial pilot certificate. European rules do not
accommodate common sense, affording no
waiver to the process.
Once my studies were completed, it
was time to schedule a pile of examinations
with the U.K. school in Spain. However, that
firm was unable to take on new students
for an extended period, so I was back to the
drawing board. With winter coming, the
United Kingdom wasn't a desirable place
for a checkride, so I searched in the Iberian
Peninsula until I found a school that did the
written exams in Mallorca, a Mediterranean
island. After a weekend trip, the written

http://www.AOPA.org/creditcard http://www.AOPA.org/creditcard http://www.blog.aopa.org http://www.garrettfisher.me http://www.blog.aopa.org

AOPA Pilot Magazine - March 2019

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