What license do I need to fly in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Middle East?

Question

Dear sir

My name is Adam Dalloul am a British citizen staying with my brother in San Diego, am thinking of studying my pilots license in the USA but I don’t know where to start or what to study because I have so much opportunity working in deferent major companies in world.

Her are my questions:

What license do I need to fly in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Middle East?

How much time and money will it take me to convert the license?

What is the difference between the ATPL and ATP? and what do you recommend?

What is the FAA, JAA and CAA?

I heard that to fly in new Zealand you need to have the CAA?

Can I fly in the UK with the CAA?

How many flying hours do I need to start working as a first officer?

Thank you very much for your help

Adam Dalloul

Answer 1

It depends what you want. Do you want to fly for a living, or just for your pleasure. I assume you want to fly for a living. When operating in a UK registered aircraft you'll need the JAA licenses, when operating in an american registered airplane you will need the FAA licenses, and so on. JAA is european, FAA is american, CAA is australian I believe (not sure). If you want to fly on a european AND and american airplane for example, you'll need both the FAA and JAA licenses. To get a job at the airlines the basic requirements are the following:

A commercial pilot license (cpl) which allows you to transport people and objects and being paid for doing so.

An instrument rating (IR) which allows you to fly airplanes in IFR conditions (bad weather conditions): you'll basically learn to fly by looking at your instruments instead of looking outside.

A Multi Engine Rating (ME): This allows you to fly an airplane with 2 engines or more, instead of just one. Although it's not really a requirement to fly for an airline, almost every airline will want you to have one of those because there aren't really any airliners with just one engine.

Finally an airliner will want you to have a type rating. Some airliners will pay a type rating for you, others won't. A type rating is basically a license which allows you to fly 1 specific airliner.

There's much difference in how many hours you need to start as a first officer. Some only wish you finished your flight school, others ask 2000 hours or more (especially in the US)

Answer 2

You don't want to learn how to fly in a straight line towards tall buildings do you?