What to expect from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)
When your application arrives with the CAA it will undergo a desk-based assessment by a Licensing Officer. For the issue, first type, additional category, or removal of limitation from a Part-66 licence, an assessment will be required by an Airworthiness Surveyor. Following an acceptable assessment your licence will be processed, signed, and despatched.
If, following an assessment, the application is found to not meet the requirements to grant the requested privileges, the CAA will either reject the application outright and provide details of the rejection reason(s), or contact you to provide the additional information necessary to complete the service.
Contact will be made via telephone or in writing if we have any queries and your application will be placed on hold until any outstanding requirements have been met. Note that where no correspondence is received within 30 working days of the CAA contacting you, your application will be rejected.
Should the CAA reject your application, an assessment fee, as per the Personnel Licensing Scheme of Charges, will be deducted to recover the average costs of application review prior to issuing any applicable refund. This fee will also be applied if you choose to cancel your application following an assessment or where no response is received within 30 working days of being contacted by the CAA.
Where the charges paid for the service applied for are less than the assessment fee, the entirety of the charges paid will be deducted and no refund issued. All underpaid postage fees are recovered before your new licence can be issued.
Processing time
Our Service Level Agreement (SLA) is to complete (assess and despatch) 90% of all applications in 10 working days, bar Part-66 applications which require a further assessment by an Airworthiness Surveyor.
In these cases, the SLA is 31 working days which includes 20 working days for the technical assessment of the application, plus a further day for issue and despatch of the licence.
Where an application is placed on hold due to outstanding information, the SLA for the application will restart and be counted from the date of receipt of the requested information. Should the application be placed on hold by a surveyor, the new SLA for the application will be 21 working days.
Note that SLA for applications received after 16:00 will be counted from the following working day.
For a minority of applications, a licensing officer may need further guidance which requires a referral to be made to a technical officer. The technical officer will review the case within 2 working days; if the complexity warrants further review, this will then be reviewed at a bi-weekly complex case review session. These applications fall into the 10% of cases that take longer than our standard turnaround times to process, however we will let you know of any delay to your application that results in this taking longer than 15 working days to complete.
Our complaints and appeals process offers guidance if you are dissatisfied by the service provided to you by the CAA. Refer to this information if you wish to appeal against a decision made by the CAA, ask for a review or raise a formal complaint.
Licence errors and omissions
If you identify an error or omission with your licence, contact us at customerservices@caa.co.uk with details of the issue. If we determine an error has been made by the CAA, the correction will be processed within 2 working days.
If the CAA is not notified of an error relating to a licence within 90 days of despatch, you will be required to apply for a replacement or the relevant service as appropriate.
Your new licence
Licence holders must check their documents upon receipt for any issues and then sign the document for this to be valid.
You must not cut your licence as the format and layout are stipulated by the CAA – this will invalidate the licence, and you will need to request a replacement
Make a note of your licence number – you will need this information if you lose your licence.
Your new licence supersedes any previous licence, and you must only use your most recently issued licence.
Requesting an expedite
If your application is urgent, you can request that we expedite it. However, we will only expedite applications in extreme circumstances and where applicable will request that you book one of our same day or expedite services instead. All other applications will be processed in strict date order.
Expedite requests must be submitted in writing to customerservices@caa.co.uk and must be submitted by your ATO or employer. We will not accept any expedite requests over the phone or directly from an applicant.