New Passport Style Pilots Licence

A note from Gary Wolf, president of RAAC, explains what is required if you find yourself without a new licence on the deadline of 1 July 2010:

NEW FORMAT LICENCE

If you have not already sent in your application and photograph to your local TC office, you might be out of luck on July 1st. However for pilots who have already sent in their applications but who have not yet received their new format licenses, there is a procedure in place to keep you flying. As soon as an office receives an application and photograph they are scanned into the TC system and sent off to the printers. Assuming that your paperwork has been scanned, you may call your local office and ask them to email you a temporary licence. This procedure has been put in place by Ottawa so if your local office refuses, remind them that the procedure is supposed to be the same across the country.

In my own case I had my medical in May and hand delivered the application with photo to Hamilton on May 13th. On June 10th I checked and it had been scanned. At the beginning of last week I still had not received the new license so I called Hamilton who verified my identity over the phone by asking my pilot license number, date of birth and address. Within ten minutes I had received an email with the temporary license attached. There is no charge for a temporary as long as the application has been received by the end of this month. Pilots who wait until after June 30th to send in their applications will be charged a fee ($45?) if they request a temporary.

My new format license and also the new temporary still had the old medical date on them but Transport will be soon be mailing a sticker with the new date, and I am to stick this into the new document. In the interim they have told me that I am to carry my old medical certificate to validate the new format license.

Gary Wolf