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

An applicant for a TRI certificate shall:

(a) hold a CPL, MPL or ATPL pilot licence on the applicable aircraft category;

[...]

(1) have completed, within the 12 months preceding the date of application, 30 route sectors, including take-offs and landings, as PIC on the applicable aeroplane type, of which 15 sectors may be completed in an FFS representing that type; and

[...]

In helicopter operations, TRIs are frequently employed even after they ended their career in commercial air transport. But – at lest in Hesse – if you go back to a Class II Medical and PPL you'll loose your privileges!

© guidance.aero

So when the holder of a TRI chucks up commercial air transport and – for reasons of age, health or simply cost – reverts to a Class II medical and as a result is issued with a PPL, he looses his TRI. Because – at least in Darmstadt – he does not fulfill the “Prerequisites” anymore.

This is of course nonsense.

First off, prerequisites apply to “An applicant for a TRI”. The person here at the point of revalidation or renewal is clearly not an applicant. He is the holder of a TRI.

Second, if EASA had intended to mandate the holder of a TRI to always have a CPL or higher, they would have simply written it that way, as they have done countless other times when actually meaning it. Such as in MED.A.030 for example, when they wrote: “Applicants for and holders of a commercial pilot licence (CPL) shall [...]”

They have not written it that way in FCL.915. Two guys from a low and lowly backwater authority simply made this up.

The tragic thing is however, that when challenged in court, they prevailed! A lower court from Gießen has recently confirmed this interpretation. The decision basically states what while it’s not entirely clear what EASA really wanted, they could have meant it that way (CPL at all times) and it’s better to err on the side of caution.

This line of thinking is not even uncommon in a German administrative court. When something is specified at one level (“An applicant”) and not specified in a subsequent stage of a process (“the holder”), the absence of something does not mean that it’s not prescribed.

Hence EASA could have meant it that way. At least in German jurisprudence. And while the court apparently assumed that the pilot looses all ability and judgement acquired in his long professional career, the instant he gets his PPL handed to him, they rather erred on the side of public safety.

Maximum incoherence

How porous bordering on the incoherent this interpretation really is, can be shown by another observation. There are of course many, many TRIs with a PPL in Germany and even in Darmstadt. All those old JAR PPL-CRIs holding instructor privileges for complex high performance airplanes have been made TRIs per Article 4 Number (6) of the same regulation.

Nothing Darmstadt can do about that. This is explicitly stated in the law.

So if our pilot had downgraded to the Class II Medical/PPL before the implementation of Part-FCL, he would have fallen under the grandfather-rules of Article 4 and still happily instructing young pilots. Since he made the same move a few months later, he looses his privileges. I would argue that this is rather the definition of arbitrariness.

Yet there is no promising way to challenge this interpretation in court. The absence of a norm does not mean it’s not there. At least not in Darmstadt or Gießen. And words don’t mean what they spell. An “applicant” is really also a “license-holder”. That’s the way the German courts see it.

EASA will have to change the law if it wants uniformity and intends to end this blatant discrimination. Two ways come to mind to accomplish this:

1. A quick fix

Change FCL.915 into something like “An applicant for a TRI certificate shall at the time of the first application ...”

This is of course redundant but apparently we don’t get it any other way.

2. Fix it more sweepingly

A more consistent approach would be to decouple the license held and the medical issued. The same way the FAA does it. A pilot can hold a CPL but with a Class II medical he is only allowed to exercise the privileges of the PPL and with no medical he’s not allowed to fly as PIC at all (but still able to get refresher training and check-flights). This would bring two additional benefits at no detriment to safety whatsoever:

• It would spare pilots the sense of degradation at the end of their careers when they might loose their Class I medical but still can convey their experience and skill to younger pilots in the role of instructor or examiner for many years.
• It would allow younger professional pilots to pursue other career choices for a few years without the significant cost of maintaining a Class I medical until their re-entry into the aviation sector.

This would require a rehash of MED.A.030 but it would alleviate a lot of other issues in the process. Get the medical when you need to exercise the associated privileges. But keep the license independent from it!