Folks
This is mainly addressed to those pilots who have an EASA licence. I have the attention of a man in the European Commission who I am having a dialogue with regarding the English Language Proficiency (ELP) qualification. If you have a couple of minutes, I would be most interested in hearing from you (PM or e-mail if you don't want to post it here) with your answers/views about this.
Specifically:
What is the state/organisation of your licence issuer (eg France/DGAC or Germany/LBA)
Do you have an ELP statement on your licence?
If yes, what level, and what did it involve to get? (I'm talking about the admin/exams, not how you learnt English, eg travel 4 hours to exam centre, take 2 hour exam, overnight accomodation, days off work)
If no, what reasons do you have for not having it? (eg my English isn't good enough, too difficult to get to an exam centre, too expensive for the number of times I will use it)
We are looking at trying to remove some of the pain for getting the qualification, not to remove the requirement or the knowledge required, so your experience and thoughts would be most useful - numbers are good too, so think of travel time and costs, as well as the organisation problems of getting a qualified person, scheduling time off work and so on
Thanks in advance
Ben