For 2008 I may well visit Canada twice, once in February for a week for winter sport (and the famous Ottawa ‘Winterlude’) and maybe for a week in late summer for a flying trip, renting a plane from somewhere in Ottawa. The only snag is that I don’t have a Canadian licence! I have a JAA PPL and a full FAA certificate, but no Canadian one.
The ever useful Flyer Forum helped a lot when I asked for advice. It seemed that the best options were either:
1. Go the JAA route.
2. Go the FAA route.
The JAA route would entail me taking the full Canadian multi-choice Transport Canada exam, then carrying out a full flight skill test.
The FAA route had changed at the end of 2006 and now meant that all I would have to do is shortened exam which focused on the differences between the FAA and Canadian regulations and fill out lots of bits of paper.
No contest – I would go the FAA route. No flight test and cheaper.
My FAA medical is and will be still in date. Only drawback is that I got my FAA ticket over three years ago and am now overdue for a BFR. So what I will do is a BFR here in the UK before Christmas, then sort the formalities at my chosen flying club in Ottawa when I get there in February. I have found a spoke to a suitable FAA examiner here in the UK and he is only in Oxford, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Of course while I am in Ottawa, I will take a plane up anyway (with an instructor) for a bit of fun in February.
This will mean that I will get my Canadian licence sorted out by March 2008, in plenty of time for aircraft hire from Ottawa for late summer 2008.
I have also had an email conversation with Rockcliffe Flying Club who were extremely helpful. The confirmed that I could do all the formalities there and subject to a checkride, could hire one of their C172s for a few days and take it into the USA if I wanted to do this. There is a minimum 3 hours per day but they indicated some flexibility over this.
So maybe there will be two decent tours for me in 2008, one in Europe with my wife and one in Canada with my buddy.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, but I am already dreaming up a roundtrip – maybe the Atlantic provinces of Canada or maybe New York to visit my sister and stooge around the USA and back via Toronto. I’ll talk it through with the guys at Rockcliffe, see if they have any ideas – nice problems to have!
