EU-OPS General Requirements — Page 20, Lesson 35

I want to walk you through the EU-OPS General Requirements for aircraft leasing, because this is a critical area for any professional pilot to understand — it governs how aircraft can be transferred between operators while maintaining safety and regulatory compliance. Let's start with the dry lease-in conditions. A dry lease means the aircraft is leased without crew — just the aeroplane itself. For an EASA operator to take an aircraft on a dry lease, several conditions must all be met. First, the lessor — that's the company leasing the aircraft out — must be an operator holding an Air Operator Certificate, or AOC, issued by a state that is a signatory of the Chicago Convention. The Chicago Convention is the international treaty that established ICAO and sets the global standards for aviation. Second, the aeroplane must have a standard Certificate of Airworthiness, or CofA, issued in accordance with ICAO Annex 8. Now here's an important detail: if the CofA was issued by an EASA member state that is not the state responsible for issuing the AOC, it will still be accepted without any further showing — meaning you don't need extra paperwork — as long as it was issued in accordance with CS-21, which is the EASA certification specification for airworthiness. And third, any EASA requirement that the lessee's Authority — that's the aviation authority of the operator taking the lease — has made applicable must be complied with. Now let's move to dry lease-out. This is when an EASA operator leases an aircraft out to another operator, again without crew, for commercial air transport. The conditions here are: the Authority — meaning the EASA operator's national aviation authority — must have exempted the EASA operator from the relevant provisions of EU-OPS Part 1. Then, the foreign regulatory Authority — the authority of the operator receiving the aircraft — must have accepted responsibility in writing for surveillance of the maintenance and operation of the aeroplane. Once that written acceptance is given, the aircraft is removed from the EASA operator's AOC. And finally, the aeroplane must be maintained in accordance with an approved maintenance programme. Finally, wet lease-out. A wet lease means the aircraft is provided with a complete crew. In this case, the EASA operator providing the aeroplane and the complete crew retains all the functions and responsibilities described in EU-OPS 1 Sub Part C, which is titled 'Operator Certification and Supervision'. That means the EASA operator remains the operator of the aeroplane for all regulatory purposes — they don't transfer operational control to the lessee. The key distinction here is that in a wet lease-out, the EASA operator keeps the aircraft on their AOC and remains fully responsible for its operation. So to summarise the core principle: dry leases involve a transfer of operational responsibility, with specific conditions for both taking in and leasing out. Wet leases keep the operational responsibility with the original operator.