Four Things EASA Has to Fix Now – Part 1: A Practical Joke on European Flight Instructors

From the many examples available to our editorial staff, we have selected four that need urgent clarification by EASA. They are not delicate details buried in the depth of the rule, they are substantial deviations from the letter or the intend of the law. And they are preventing pilots and instructors from earning their living.

We will outline one example every Monday for the next four weeks. A German language version of these articles is available in Pilot und Flugzeug 2015/11.

1. FCL.205.A – Who and what can be taught by a PPL-Instructor?

Does EASA play practical jokes on the European flight instructors? One the one hand a PPL-instructor is permitted to instruct a CPL-holder for a class or typerating but on the other hand he's not allowed to get paid!

Flight instructors holding a PPL as a base license are obviously restricted in who and what they can instruct. On a license level, they can only instruct up to the PPL. They can not teach the CPL. That is understood, makes sense and is to our knowledge implemented uniformly and correctly.

The instruction of type- or class ratings however is a different animal altogether. Can a PPL FI or CRI instruct the holder of a CPL or ATPL for e.g. the single engine (land) class rating? Or to put it in more practical terms: Can Willy Patternmaster, the local PPL-FI from a little fight school or aero club, instruct Eddy Airline, an A320 captain, if Eddy decides to brush up on his SEP-skills?

Common sense and practical experience would say: Of course! The fact that Eddy Airline also drives around the big iron does not make Willy Patternmasters instruction any less valid, safe or useful.

But let’s go back to the abstract: There is no license-level in type or class ratings. There is no ‘gold plated SEP’ for CPL-guys and no ‘platinum MEP’ for ATPL-holders. A rating is a rating. This is why – thankfully – when you move up the license-ladder, you don’t have to redo them or get rechecked for them. Ratings just move along, whatever the underlying license level may be.

And EASA agrees with that. They better do, because they came up with it. EASA has stated numerous times, that of course a PPL-FI can instruct the holder of any license (PPL, CPL or ATPL) for class- or type ratings.

Not playing ball

For reasons unknown to us, the German LBA was blocking this for a long time, arguing that the instructor can only instruct what he holds himself and since he only has a PPL-SEP he can never ever teach an SEP class rating to a commercial pilot. Thus the LBA was simply inventing a license-level for type or class ratings.

Effectively the LBA was arguing that Willy Patternmaster somehow would ’spoil’ Eddy Airline with his greasy PPL ways and Eddy had to be protected from this, ignoring the fact that ratings are a classless bunch, much like your garden-variety socialist utopia.

EASA got so annoyed by this lack of basic understanding that they actually added a special provision into the NPA 2014-29, explicitly stating that the PPL-instructor is and always was allowed to do this:

“In FCL.915 General prerequisites and requirements for instructors, the text in (b) is amended to clarify it and make it better understandable. The separation of licence and class or type rating training is considered necessary to allow also holders of a PPL to train holders of a CPL or ATPL for class or type ratings they are qualified for. The text is amended to lift unnecessary burden from General Aviation pilots and to achieve harmonised implementation in all Member States.”

Note the wording here “to clarify it and make it better understandable”. EASA is not saying that it is revising policy. This was the law all along. EASA effectively says: “For all the dimwits over in Braunschweig, who don’t even get the basic principles of Part-FCL, we’re gonna spell it out yet again: A PPL-instructor is allowed to train holders of a CPL or ATPL for class or type ratings he (the instructor) is qualified for.”

Can EASA make it any clearer than that? We would not know how.

Round two

The beauty of bureaucratic infighting however is, that you may loose a battle without even suffering a setback in the war. Just shift the theatre of operations! And nobody in his right mind would claim, that the folks at LBA department L (Licensing) are quitters when it comes to office wars.

So LBA came up with another explanation why Willy Patternmaster can’t show Eddy Airline the dos and don’ts of the old Skyhawk. And even though we vigorously disagree on the factual level, we’ve got to give them credits for effort and creativity!

They came up with FCL.205.A PPL(A) — Privileges:

(b) Notwithstanding the paragraph above, the holder of a PPL(A) with instructor or examiner privileges may receive remuneration for:

(1) the provision of flight instruction for the LAPL(A) or PPL(A);

(2) the conduct of skill tests and proficiency checks for these licences;

(3) the training, testing and checking for the ratings or certificates attached to this licence.

The operative sentence here is no (3): “the training, testing and checking for the ratings or certificates attached to this license.”

LBA claims that ‘this license’ only refers to the PPL of the applicant. So Willy Patternmaster may have the privilege to instruct Eddy Airline all he likes, but he is not allowed to get paid!

Consequently LBA is denying all PPL-FIs, CRIs and TRIs to work in commercial flight schools, as they cleverly deduct that the instructor might eventually get compensated for his troubles.

A lot of training organizations and instructors are affected: Particularly:

Schools that train SEP and MEP land
Schools that train SEP sea ratings
Schools that train SET ratings, e.g. P46T, TBM, Caravan, Porter etc.

Typical example: A PPL-instructor in a school teaching the seaplane-rating. While he may instruct PPL-holders, according to the LBA and German Ministry of Transport, he would not be allowed to instruct a CPL-pilot for the exact same rating. At least not, if he's compensated.

Any PPL-based FI, CRI or TRI is practically not employable in these training organizations anymore, as scheduling would constantly have to monitor that he doesn’t get into the same cockpit with a CPL or ATPL holder.

Individual FIs, CRIs, TRIs and Examinsers outside an ATO are also affected. They can not perform refresher-training or checkflights with CPL and ATPL holders, as the assumption would also be that they got paid for this.

We should note, that the sentence in question (3) was in itself a quick fix to the problem of general PPL-remuneration and was added on March 14, 2014 to alleviate restrictive interpretations by some other national CAAs.

The wording to allow “training, testing and checking for the ratings or certificates attached to this license” is clearly an unfortunate one. Strictly, the interpretation adopted by the LBA is comprehensible and has been confirmed by the German Ministry of Transport.

Inability to resolve issue nationally

What is lacking in Germany and what is present in other countries is the ability of the administration to reconcile two obviously contradictory provisions in a given code of law.

Assuming that EASA did not play practical jokes on the pilot community by allowing PPL-instructors on the one hand to teach and on the other hand denying them remuneration for it, other authorities have reconciled this by looking at the intend of the lawmaker as clearly stated multiple times and most recently in NPA 2014-29.

This is why PPL-instructors can work in any Austrian, Swiss or French ATO. But not in a German one.

There is however no hope for this to happen in Germany. It’s a cultural thing. If EASA had written in a footnote that at one point the applicant has to jump out the window, we would ask for an AMC specifying how high.

The situation would not even be perceived as a contradiction here. Maybe ... for some reason ... EASA really wanted to keep the door open just for instructors who are already rich?

So this can not be solved on a national level. No court in Germany would strike down the provision in FCL.205.A only because it totally contradicts a provision under FCL.915 and the stated intention of the lawmaker.

EASA has to amend or change the law. Quickly. Just erasing “attached to this license” would probably suffice.

Read our next installments on

November 9th: "Let's make things up!"
November 16th: "Why Don't You Try a Different Airplane?"
November 23rd: "The Answer is Not 42"

The Author is Managing Editor of Pilot und Flugzeug Magazine and the Accountable Manager of a small Approved Training Organisation (ATO). He holds an FAA ATP CFII/ME and an EASA CPL(A) with FI ME CPL IR and TRI(A) privileges. He’s also an EASA class- and typerating examiner. When he’s not busy bugging the authorities he freelances with a German Air Ambulance Service.