These recurring threads on whether a Flugwerk FW190 may or may not fly in the UK are always pathetic, overly emotional, mostly based on assumptions and completely overlook the facts.
This aircraft is not a Focke-Wulf Fw 190’s.
It is a very a complex, homebuilt, experimental aircraft, which looks like one, and which happens to have a similar name (Flugwerk FW190).
As such, it is not covered by EASA (so it’s pointless to blame them) but is subject to national regulations, just as a homebuilt Jodel would be.
As far as I recall, Flugwerk worked very closely with the Luftfahrtbundesamt (German CAA) right from the beginning of the project and had each and every stage of the project approved before proceeding to the next.
This is why they can be registered in Germany, and probably also why Flugwerk was exceptionally given permission to build and fly several aircraft.
Restrictions on operating experimental aircraft – or other non-standard approval aircraft, such as microlights – in other countries than where it is registered generally apply to all aircraft of this type. Another country may or may not permit operations within its jurisdiction. Try taking your G-reg microlight to Denmark, for example.
France seems to accept the German experimental CoA without further ado, the UK doesn’t. Tough look, that’s just the way it is with national regulations. Happens to microlight owners all the time.
Personally, I can to some extent follow the CAA’s reluctance to automatically approve of a complex replica (not a reproduction!) of a high-performance aircraft which has no operations track record over the last sixty years, particularly when served to them as a fait accompli in completed form. You would have exactly the same problems if you would dash over to the US of A and bring back a turbine-powered Lancair IVP with a self-installed Garmin G1000 for IFR operations on the G-register.
Moreover, somewhere on the Internet there’s an interview with the head of the CAA who has stated that they have already explained what kind of process would be required to consider approval this aircraft, but that the application process was never initiated by the operators.
Among the CAA, EASA and EU slagging which always occurs in these threads, I find it stunning (to put it mildly) that it is always conveniently overlooked that while your CAA may not be too enthusiastic about the FW190, they actually allow private operation of an Avro Vulcan and (wealthy) PPL holders to buy and operate Hawker Hunters, just to mention two examples in their favour. You still consider them to be “anti-aviation”?
The Danish CAA, for example, has stated that they will not allow ex-military jets to be put on the Danish register anymore. As another example, a Piper J-3C-65 requires a silencer to operate without limitations in Germany. This is what might happen if you were to attempt to put all aircraft under the EASA umbrella for harmonization purposes!
Most of the posters in this thread seem to be absolutely spoiled when it comes to the range of aircraft displayed in public in the UK, and the amount of whining about this one particular aircraft is, by consequence, pathetic.
If it’s so important to you to see an FW190 in the air, why did none of you catch a cheap flight to Stuttgart in September last year and go and see one at nearby Hahnweide? Continental European enthusiasts do this all the time; in the other direction.
Or was that just too much of an effort – just as it was trying to understand the facts of this case?
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