Part-66 B1.1 experience requirements

Three routes, and which one you are on depends entirely on your prior training. All three require the experience to be practical and on operating aircraft.

Check which group you are reading. The figures most often quoted are 3, 2 and 1 years, and they come from 66.A.30(a)(1), which covers category A, B1.2, B1.4, B3. B1.1 is not in that group. It sits in 66.A.30(a)(2) with B1.3 and B2, where every route is two years longer. Planning on three years without a skilled worker trade qualification leaves you two years short.

Training and experience do not have to come in a fixed order. Guidance published alongside the rule allows them to be mixed the way an apprenticeship does, and counts part-time, professional and voluntary experience alike. That guidance is Acceptable Means of Compliance, not the rule itself, so read it as what an authority will normally accept rather than as a right, and where experience is combined across two categories, it must have covered both at the same time, not one after the other.

Three conditions sit on top of the year count, and each one rules out a different kind of otherwise plausible history.

It must be recent, and on the right aircraft. At least one year must be recent maintenance experience on aircraft of the category or subcategory you are applying for (66.A.30(d)), which for B1.1 means turbine aeroplanes. If you are adding to a licence you already hold, that recent period may be less than a year, but never less than 3 months.

It must be inside the window. All of the required experience must have been gained within the 10 years before your application (66.A.30(f)). That is the same length as the exam window and anchored to the same date, but it is a separate rule: you can meet one and fail the other. The UK CAA indicates that older evidence may be taken into account, but that is the CAA’s discretion, not an extension of the window.

It must be broad. The rule’s own words: “The experience shall be practical and involve a representative cross section of maintenance tasks on aircraft.” (66.A.30(c)). Five years spent on one task, or on one narrow system, does not satisfy a rule that asks for a representative cross section.

EASA guidance also suggests that, for category B1, at least twelve months of the experience should be gained in an organisation approved under Part-145 or Part-CAO. That is guidance rather than rule, because it says “should”, and it is a figure for category B1 as a whole, not something specific to B1.1. We have found no equivalent UK statement.

On Form 19 (66.A.10(a), referring to Appendix V): EASA Form 19 to the competent authority of a Member State, or CAA Form 19 to the UK CAA. EASA does not itself issue Part-66 licences. A Member State’s competent authority does. An application to change a licence goes to the authority that issued the licence, and where you are adding a basic category or subcategory you send the current original licence with the form.

The rule itself says: “Each application shall be supported by documentation to demonstrate compliance with the applicable theoretical knowledge, practical training and experience requirements at the time of application.” (66.A.10(f)). The phrase doing the work there is at the time of application: both windows of ten years are measured from that date, so the application is the event everything else is timed against.

There is no deadline between passing your final exam and applying. We read the whole of 66.A.10 in both texts, and no such limit exists anywhere in Part-66, so the only limits are the two windows of ten years. That does not stop a training organisation or a national authority setting its own deadlines for its own candidates, which sit outside the regulation.

On cost, the published figures are narrow but real. The UK CAA Scheme of Charges (Personnel Licensing), ORS5 No. 446, effective 1 April 2026, charges £455 for the grant of a licence per category or subcategory combination, and £60 for each attempt at an exam the CAA itself runs. Those are reissued every March, so check the current scheme. What a Part-147 organisation charges for training or exams is commercial: no regulator publishes or caps it, and no authority publishes a total cost of getting licensed.

5 years from the last issue or change of the licence (66.A.40(a)). To keep it running past that, you send it to the authority, who confirm that the details it carries still match their records. Any change resets the five years. A licence is only valid at all once the authority has issued or changed it and you have signed it.

Holding a valid licence and being allowed to use it are two different things. To use the certifying privileges you must have done six months of maintenance work covered by those privileges in the preceding two years, or have shown the authority you still meet the conditions for their issue (66.A.20(b)(2)). Falling short suspends the privileges; it does not invalidate the licence, which continues to run its five years.

None of this yet lets you certify a particular aircraft. Aircraft type ratings (66.A.45) and a certifying authorisation from the organisation you work for are separate again, and they are one of the five things people most often get wrong.

This page answers one part of the B1.1 route in full. The rest of the guide covers the others.