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I'd like some guidance for my career. I completed my basic CPL from South Africa in 2009 and got a job in January 2015 flying a C208B in Nepal. Now I'm in the USA for more than a year and I'm thinking about continuing my flying here. I have less than 300 hours.

So what do I do now? What is the process to convert my license to an FAA one? What would be a good flying school to join in New York?

Pondlife
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CMFLYER
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    Welcome to aviation.SE! This is a Q&A site, not a forum, so we discourage questions that ask for opinions or don't have a clear answer (you can check the [tour] for more information). We do already have a question about validating a foreign license, although if you plan to stay in the US for some years, I strongly recommend getting a full FAA license because they never expire. But validating your SA license might still be a good short-term thing to do. – Pondlife Mar 01 '17 at 22:11

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There are a few things you will need to do to convert it over. You can find a lot of the information on the FAA's website here. This is pertaining to FAA FAR 61.75

  1. Get your foreign license verified by the FAA. This takes 45-90 days and you cant make any moves until this is complete.
  2. Find a local flight school. Once your license has been verified you can start your US training. Assuming you are not a resident you are going to need to get TSA approval to train.
  3. Once you are TSA approved to train you can start to train here. While your hours will count from your previous experience you will still need to pass the FAA written exams and practical exams. As such you will need to learn a bit about general operations here specifically in the US.
  4. Once you have done your training and are prepared to pass the tests and check rides you can schedule them. Your instructor will help you with this.

You will still need to progress through the US certifications PPL->Instrument Rating->CPL and complete all required flight time and tasks to do so. There is no minimum time between check rides so if you have completed all the exams and tasks you can do them all one after another.

Dave
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    This isn't entirely correct. Once you validate a foreign license, you can start flying immediately with no further training or TSA checks required (see this question). But you can only get an FAA private license that way, so if the OP wants an FAA CPL then indeed he will have to go through the TSA/training process. – Pondlife Mar 01 '17 at 22:18
  • I had read the question as wanting to convert the CPL over but you are correct. – Dave Mar 01 '17 at 22:57