Part-66 Validity: Type Ratings and Renewal

A licence with an expiry date

A Part-66 aircraft maintenance licence is not a qualification you earn once and keep forever. It is a controlled document with a clock running against it. Pass the modules, log the experience, get the licence issued — and from that day a five-year countdown begins. Let it lapse and the licence becomes invalid, and with it every certification privilege you derive from it. The validity rule is set out in point 66.A.40.

Read point (a) before you rely on an old issue date. The 5 years run from the last issue or change, not only from first issue. Points (b), (c) and (d) are in the quotation: how the licence is submitted, what happens to the privileges, and the holder’s signature.

Type and aircraft ratings

Holding a valid licence is necessary, but it is not the whole story. The licence states the categories you hold — A, B1, B2, B3, C and so on. The entitlement to exercise certification privileges on a specific aircraft type comes from the aircraft ratings endorsed on it. Point 66.A.45 governs how those ratings are earned and recorded.

Read point (a) for the rating that matches the category and the group. The quotation leaves out the B2L, B3 and category L lines. The category A sentence in that quotation is about whether a rating is required. It does not remove 66.A.20. Points (b) and (c) are the training steps. Do not certify an aircraft type on a B1 licence unless the relevant aircraft rating is endorsed.

Recency — being current to certify

A valid licence, and the right rating, still do not by themselves mean the holder may sign a release today. Exercising the privileges has its own conditions in 66.A.20(b). The recent-experience condition is one of them. It lives in Part-66.

The recent-experience condition is 66.A.20(b)(2). It lives in Part-66. This page does not describe an organisation's duties under the other annexes named in point (b)(1). The licence overview quotes the rest of 66.A.20(b).

The 5 years in 66.A.40 and point (b)(2) are different checks. Meeting point (b)(2) does not keep an invalid licence alive. A licence that is still inside its 5 years does not, by itself, satisfy point (b)(2).

Staying current in practice

Picture an ExampleAir B1 engineer with a healthy licence: Group 1 type ratings, recent experience in the hangar, and the 5-year date reset by the last endorsement. The risk is rarely competence. It is administration. A type rating the records office never quite finished. A validity date that drifts toward expiry between endorsements. The 66.A.20(b)(2) condition, which needs watching when the engineer rotates onto a fleet they have not touched for a long time. None of these are hard problems. They are easy to lose track of.

The discipline is to treat the licence as a small portfolio of dated facts and to keep it visible: which ratings are endorsed, what each one entitles you to certify, when the 66.A.40 period next falls due, and where you stand on point 66.A.20(b)(2). Avioverse's certifications tracker is built for exactly this — it keeps per-renewal snapshot history so you can see what the licence looked like at each change, and renewal reminders so the validity date never ambushes you. The aircraft type-rating lookup complements it by resolving which manufacturer, model and variant a given rating actually covers, so there is no guessing about whether a type falls inside what your licence is endorsed for. The aim is the same throughout: the engineer should know, at a glance, that the licence is valid, the rating is right, and point 66.A.20(b)(2) is met — before standing at the aircraft, not after.

The series, end to end

This is the fifth and final guide in the Part-66 series, and it closes the loop the series opened. The flagship, The EASA Part-66 Aircraft Maintenance Licence: A Complete Guide, maps the whole licence — what it is, what it lets you do, and how the pieces fit. From there the companions go deep where this overview only points: Part-66 Licence Categories Explained: A, B1, B2, B3 and C sorts out which category does what; Part-66 Modules and Examinations: The Basic Knowledge Requirements covers the basic-knowledge exams that get you in the door; and Part-66 Experience Requirements and Applying for Your Licence walks the experience and application route to first issue. Read in order, they take you from earning the licence to keeping it valid, rated and current — the full life of a Part-66 licence, from application to the day-to-day discipline of staying entitled to sign.