Crediting for third-country licence holders

The Agency introduced a few changes in order to simplify the criteria for Part-FCL licence

holders also holding a third-country IR, to obtain their IR converted into a Part-FCL IR.

Firstly, the demonstration of theoretical knowledge was clarified by allowing the applicant

to demonstrate an adequate level of knowledge to the examiner during the skill test. The

number of subjects was also reduced to three and cover air law, meteorology, and flight

planning & performance.

Secondly, several comments proposed to further review the requirement of 100 hours

prior instrument flight time as PIC. As this requirement stems from criteria already

established for the acceptance of licences and ratings, the Agency came to the conclusion

that this could be reduced to 50 hours of minimum experience (instrument flight time) as

PIC. The Agency also made provisions for those pilots with less than the 50 hours of

minimum experience by allowing them to credit PIC hours towards the EIR and

competency-based IR(A) courses. Please see paragraph ‘crediting of prior experience’ in

this section and items 13 and 31 for further details.

Finally, several comments requested the deletion of the skill test and English language

requirements. The Agency strongly believes that to ensure a minimum standard and

consistency both requirements should be kept and therefore decided to keep the skill test

and the FCL.055 English language proficiency requirements as proposed by the NPA. The

method of assessment shall be established by the competent authority.