If you don’t already know, I decided to change job and because of this, I became a low time pilot, and saved my IFR rating for one year.

The big leap is now behind me: this post is the first one I wrote from our new home in the Frankfurt area – using a temporary UMTS connection (sorry for non tech-savvy readers). The move and adrministrative work it created is not totally over now, but strangely the aeronautical part is not the hardest.

When I called the swiss Federal Office for Civil Aviation (FOCA), they simply told me I had to notify my new address to them, and that’s it. Thanks to JAA, no need to convert my swiss-issued JAA licence into a german-issued JAA licence.

The medical part is a bit more complex. JAAs don’t allow to change Aeronautical Medical Examiner (AME) without a good reason, but an international move is certainly a good one. But as I will probably go back to Geneva periodically, I can also arrange an examination with my swiss AME.

Flying again is not the highest priority, compared to set-up the house, see how the family runs on the new budget, give a good start to this new job (still air-transport related…), and get used to this new life.

However, if some of you have tips about flying in Germany, particularly in the southern Frankfurt area, I would greatly appreciate that. I already identified Egelsbach as a potential new homebase. You can send your suggestions in comments, or mail-me directly (address in “About me“) page.

Despite all these changes, I expect to keep the pace up with this blog, and I gathered new ideas during the few days I was not online (yes, you read some pre-written posts…), so stay on this frequency for more !