EASA Licences and ratings

ATPL in aviation stands for Airline Transport Pilot Licence. 

The ATPL abbreviation always comes with an aircraft category designator at the end.

• ATPL(A) stands for Aeroplanes
• ATPL(H) stands for Helicopters

It is internationally accepted abbreviation of the Airline Transport Pilot Licence, which is the highest rank of the flight crew licence. It gives the holder the privileges to exercise flights for renumeration and act as an airline captain.

The privileges of the holder of a ATPL are, within the appropriate aircraft category, to:

• exercise all the privileges of the holder of an LAPL, a PPL and a CPL;
• act as PIC of aircraft engaged in commercial air transport

It is not possible to obtain the ATPL licence right away, since it requires additional experience to turn the CPL licence into ATPL.

For Aeroplanes category, following minimum flight time requirement is 1500 hours out of which folowing appies:

• 500 hours in multi-pilot operations on aeroplanes;
• 500 hours as PIC under supervision; or
  • 250 hours as PIC; or
  • 250 hours, including at least 70 hours as PIC, and the remaining as PIC under supervision;
• 200 hours of cross-country flight time of which at least 100 hours shall be as PIC or as PIC under supervision;
• 75 hours of instrument time of which not more than 30 hours may be instrument ground time; and
• 100 hours of night flight as PIC or co-pilot.

Of the 1500 hours of flight time, up to 100 hours of flight time may have been completed in an FFS and FNPT. Of these 100 hours, only a maximum of 25 hours may be completed in an FNPT.

To turn the CPL into ATPL the applicant has to obtain the multi-pilot typeraing and be a holder of EASA Multi-Engine Instrument Rating and MCC.

Meeting all the pre-requisites for issue of ATPL without having the minimum flight time requirements is called Frozen ATPL. However the holder of Frozen ATPL is in fact a holder of a Commercial Pilot Licence.