On June 4, a BeCA delegation met the managers of the Belgian CAA Licence Department. The agenda covered several issues linked to the implementation of the EASA Part-FCL regulations but also the complaints about the degradation of the service provided by the Licence Department: access limited to 2 half days a week, department accessible by phone only 2 hours per day, delay in issuance of some licences.

Mr D’Homme, the Head of the Licence Department, admitted those shortcomings were mainly due to a lack of resources. The move to the new offices (now located Rue du Progrès 56/Vooruitgangsstraat 56, at 5’ walking distance from the North Station) combined with the implementation of Part-FCL worsened the situation.

During this fruitful meeting, we discussed the following topics:
According to EASA regulations, pilots flying for 3rd country operators (i.e. operators not under EASA regulations) can convert their licence and rating obtained in a 3rd country provided they demonstrate experience and recency on type and they pass an EASA LPC. The former JAR FCL regulations allowed those pilots to receive a JAR licence with a type rating restricted to this 3rd country without passing a JAR LPC, but this was “forgotten” in the EASA FCL.740 regulation. Since most of the other EASA countries still deliver (and even revalidate) those restricted licences and ratings, we asked our CAA to submit to EASA a derogation identical to the one submitted by the French DGAC.

Pilots who get a new rating after the completion of ZFTT (Zero Flight Time Training, i.e. training including touch and goes exclusively done in a simulator) receive now a licence bearing the mention “XXX rating restricted to [operator’s name]”. This is just a reminder that the type rating will only be completed after 4 landings in an aircraft of the type. This will be done in the first day(s) of line training, under the supervision of a TRI. When the BCAA receives the confirmation of the airline that the landings have been completed, they will issue at no extra cost a new licence with an unrestricted type rating.

The BCAA reminded that only 1 pilot could log the flight time as PIC: the left hand seat pilot (or the instructor for training flights) is the Commander of the flight and can log flight hours as PIC. This is also applicable to cruise relief captains.

New licensing regulations recently introduced (Multi-crew Pilot Licence, multiple choice questions for theoretical tests…) proficiency check requirements. These are no more in line with the new threats of modern aviation and might therefore lower the level of skills and competences. Recent accidents (AF447, Asiana 214, TransAsia 235…) emphasised those concerns. Working groups are now set up at international level to counter this negative tendency and new licensing requirements (like upset recovery, open questions…) might be introduced in the future.

We are pleased to see that BeCA is also considered as a partner for licensing issues and we will closely monitor the whereabouts of the derogation to FCL.940.