Licences, Ratings and Medical Certificates

The commercial pilot licence

The CPL is the first professional licence. For the aeroplane category, its issue requires: a minimum age of 18 years; completion of a training course at an approved training organisation, integrated (at least 150 hours of flight time) or modular (at least 200 hours), the integrated course buying its lower hour count with continuous, structured training; the theoretical knowledge examinations; and a skill test — the previous lesson's term for the check that issues a licence. Within the required hours sit experience components such as pilot-in-command time, cross-country flying including a long solo navigation flight, night flying and instrument instruction.

The privileges of the CPL, in the order Part-FCL grants them:

exercise all the privileges of the holder of an LAPL and a PPL;

act as pilot-in-command or co-pilot of any aircraft engaged in operations other than commercial air transport;

act as pilot-in-command in commercial air transport of any single-pilot aircraft, subject to restrictions: recent-experience rules, and operational requirements such as a valid instrument rating for flights under instrument flight rules or with passengers at night;

act as co-pilot in commercial air transport.

Read the third and fourth bullets together and the CPL's ceiling appears: in commercial air transport the CPL holder commands only single-pilot aircraft; in the multi-pilot cockpit of an airliner the CPL is a co-pilot licence. Command there belongs to the next licence.

The airline transport pilot licence

The ATPL tops the ladder. For aeroplanes its issue requires a minimum age of 21 years, the theoretical knowledge examinations this course prepares, and substantial experience: at least 1,500 hours of flight time in aeroplanes, including at least 500 hours in multi-pilot operations. Command experience can be shown three ways: 250 hours as pilot-in-command; or 500 hours as pilot-in-command under supervision (the co-pilot arrangement in which the captain lets the co-pilot act as PIC and countersigns the time, abbreviated PICUS); or 250 hours of which at least 70 as pilot-in-command and the remainder as PICUS. (Older exam material may still use the superseded split of 100 PIC plus 150 PICUS.) On top come 200 hours of cross-country flight time, of which 100 as pilot-in-command or PICUS, 75 hours of instrument time (at most 30 of them instrument ground time) and 100 hours of night flight. The skill test is flown in a multi-pilot aeroplane: the licence certifies command of a crew, and the test matches.

The privileges are correspondingly simple: the ATPL holder may exercise all the privileges of the LAPL, PPL and CPL holder, and may act as pilot-in-command of aircraft engaged in commercial air transport: the multi-pilot command the CPL withholds. In practice a young professional pilot flies for years on a CPL with the ATPL theory passed, logging multi-pilot hours as a co-pilot until the 1,500-hour experience gate opens.

The multi-crew pilot licence

The MPL is the airline-track alternative: a licence trained from the first lesson for the multi-pilot cockpit. Its issue requires a minimum age of 18 and completion of an integrated MPL training course at an approved training organisation (there is no modular route), built competency-based around crew cooperation and simulator training, with theoretical knowledge at ATPL level. Its privileges mirror that design: the MPL holder may act as co-pilot of an aeroplane required to be operated with a co-pilot, in the operator's environment the training was built around. To exercise wider privileges (private flying as pilot-in-command, or the CPL's single-pilot commercial privileges), the MPL holder must first meet additional requirements; the licence is deliberately narrow at issue.

Class and type ratings

Which aircraft those licences may actually be flown on is the business of the ratings, and each rating runs on its own clock:

Class rating — covers a class of single-pilot aeroplanes: single-engine piston (SEP), multi-engine piston (MEP), touring motor glider (TMG); issued after training and a skill test. Validity: two years for single-pilot single-engine class ratings, one year for the multi-engine piston class.

Type rating — covers one aircraft type (every multi-pilot aeroplane and any single-pilot aircraft the agency has decided demands type-specific training); requires a course at an approved training organisation plus a skill test. Validity: one year.

Keeping a rating alive uses the machinery the previous lesson defined. Revalidation happens inside the validity: for class and type ratings typically a proficiency check within the three months before the expiry date, and type and MEP ratings additionally ask for 10 route sectors within the validity period, or 1 route sector flown with an examiner. The SEP and TMG classes offer a gentler alternative: revalidation by recent experience instead of a check: within the 12 months before expiry, 12 hours in the class including 6 hours as pilot-in-command, 12 take-offs and 12 landings, and a refresher training flight of at least an hour with an instructor. Miss the expiry and the previous lesson's other word applies: renewal, with refresher training as required and a proficiency check.

The instrument ratings

Flying in cloud is its own rating family, and Part-FCL now contains three members:

Instrument rating (IR) — the full ICAO-level rating: issued after theoretical knowledge and instrument flight training at an approved training organisation and a skill test, it opens flight under instrument flight rules down to the standard minima, and it is the version commercial operations require.
Competency-based instrument rating (CB-IR) — reaches the same rating by a shorter, competency-based route that credits instrument experience a pilot already has; its privileges match the IR for the aeroplane category.
Basic instrument rating (BIR) — the EU's own creation, like the LAPL below the ICAO framework: a modular, competency-based rating for non-commercial aeroplane flying under instrument flight rules, with privileges limited to that private use; it does not serve as the instrument rating of a professional career.

All three run on the instrument-rating clock: valid one year, revalidated by proficiency check in the final three months.

The other ratings

Subpart I of Part-FCL collects the additional ratings; the exam expects the family and their headline rules:

Night rating — training course at a training organisation; extends visual-rules privileges into the night as the previous lesson defined it; once issued it does not expire.
Aerobatic rating — training course; required for aerobatic flight; does not expire.
Sailplane and banner towing ratings — training courses; required to tow; do not expire, but the privileges may only be exercised after at least 5 tows in the preceding 24 months (or a refresher with an instructor).
Mountain rating — required for landing on designated mountain sites; the exception in this family: it is valid for two years, revalidated by at least 6 landings on mountain sites in that period, or a proficiency check.
Flight test rating — for categories of test flying on aircraft under development or modification; does not expire.

Part-MED and the medical certificate

Annex IV to the Aircrew Regulation, Part-MED, carries the medical requirements. Its administrative part sets out who examines and who decides: medical certificates are issued by an aeromedical examiner (AME) (a doctor certified for aviation medicine) or by an aeromedical centre (AeMC), with the competent authority overseeing both; the initial Class 1 examination is done at an aeromedical centre. A certificate is issued when the applicant completes the examination and meets the medical requirements for the class applied for. Two separate mechanisms round the picture off:

Routine limitations — limitations the examiner can attach directly; the corrective-lenses note on many certificates is the everyday example.
Referral — the genuinely doubtful cases go to the licensing authority, which decides whether to issue, and with what limitations.

The certificates carry their own validity clocks, and the exam asks them. A Class 1 certificate is valid for 12 months, reduced to 6 months for holders aged 60 or more, and for holders aged 40 or more flying single-pilot commercial air transport with passengers. A Class 2 certificate is valid for 60 months up to age 40, 24 months from 40 to 50, and 12 months over 50: the private pilot's examination interval stretching with youth and tightening with age.

The classes map onto the licence ladder: exercising the privileges of a CPL, MPL or ATPL requires a Class 1 medical certificate (the professional standard), while the PPL flies on Class 2 and the LAPL on its own lighter certificate. And the certificate is only half the system; the other half is the holder's own duty when health changes. Holders must not exercise the privileges of their licence when they are aware of any decrease in medical fitness that could make them unable to exercise those privileges safely, and must seek aeromedical advice without undue delay when they:

have undergone a surgical operation or invasive procedure;
have commenced the regular use of any medication;
have suffered a significant personal injury involving incapacity to function as a member of the flight crew;
have been suffering from a significant illness involving such incapacity;
are pregnant;
have been admitted to a hospital or medical clinic;
first require a correcting lens.

The logic of the list: the annual examination samples health once a year, but the pilot lives with it every day, so the reporting duty sits with the pilot, and the aeromedical examiner decides what the change means for the certificate.