Case of unlawful revocation of a pilot’s licence

Both commercial and private pilots can have their licences revoked. The latter is less common.

Courts rarely hear such disputes, each of which is unique and requires attention to detail. Therefore, it is quite common for one court to rule in favour of one party in a dispute over the unlawful revocation of a pilot’s licence, while another court rules in favour of the other party.

From my practice: a pilot of the Nordwind airline was deprived of his commercial pilot’s licence by a decision of one of the district courts of St. Petersburg due to improper completion of initial training. This refers to the flight time required to obtain a PPL (private pilot licence), which was 10 years prior to the current events. Since then, the pilot has flown approximately 3,600 hours.

The revocation was initiated by one of the interregional territorial air transport administrations of the Federal Air Transport Agency (otherwise known as one of Rosaviatsiya’s MTAs). This is despite the fact that commercial pilot licences are issued by the same FATA (Rosaviatsiya) and its MTAs.

Based on an appeal prepared by a lawyer, the St. Petersburg City Court overturned the decision of the court of first instance (two court hearings were required) and declared the decision of the Rosaviatsiya MTU unlawful.

Now, for its part, the MTU of Rosaviatsiya has appealed the decision of the court of appeal to the Fourth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction, which upheld the appeal decision.

P. S. Make sure that the documents relating to your training are correctly drawn up at every stage, even if they are drawn up by specialists. It is human nature to make mistakes.