Electronic Personnel Licenses (EPL)

About EPL

ICAO has adopted Standards for an electronic personnel licence (EPL) in Annex 1 – Personnel Licensing. The Annex establishes that a State can choose to issue: 

• Licences on first-quality paper or other suitable material, including plastic cards (referred to as "hardcopy"); or
• Electronic personnel licences on self-contained mobile electronic visual display devices, which is an added option States may choose to implement.

Implementation of EPL for civil aviation is a complex task. The main goals of EPL are to enhance the safety, security and efficiency of the civil aviation licensing system. An EPL system should be globally interoperable and trustworthy, as it will interconnect different Issuing Authorities. EPL should also guarantee security and accuracy of information and protect the privacy of the licence holder. Additionally, the implementation must provide flexibility to support States in the selection of architectures that best meet their needs. 

As an EPL will be subject to verification by inspectors of the Issuing Authority but also by other Contracting States as part of their State Safety Program, Inspectors not affiliated with the licence Issuing Authority must be able to securely access and authenticate the license.

The verification of an EPL is now enabled by an interim solution for existing EPL systems and will be supported by a long-term solution for the future and existing EPL systems.

There are two different solutions to support the verification of an EPL by an inspector:

• The current active solution is the interim solution which supports States that have an EPL system already implemented while waiting for the long-term solution to be effective.
• The long-term solution, in development, based on ISO/IEC 18013-15:2021 Standard described in the ICAO Doc10190 - ELECTRONIC PERSONNEL LICENCE(EPL) Technical specifications for implementation and verification (to be published in Q3 2023).

The interim solution allows an inspector to verify an EPL via 3 different means

1. An automated online digital verification by scanning a standard QR code and opening a browser to the EPL information used by an inspector for verification. The complete set of EPL fields will be returned to the inspector since the EPL holder implicitly provided consent when showing the QR code on her/his license. The automated query was launched on 22nd March 2023.
2. A manual query, performed on an ICAO website, provides limited EPL information to an authorized aviation inspector since there is no direct EPL holder consent.
3. A visual verification, mimicking the current inspection processes employed when verifying a paper/plastic-based pilot licence. It uses EPL verification job aids which are documents issued by Licensing Authorities having active EPLs systems. The EPL verification job aids provide inspectors with official information on the security features of EPLs to facilitate the verification of such licences.

For additional information, please contact epl [at] icao.int (epl[at]icao[dot]int) .

• Offline Job Aid
• EPL Interim online verification guidance
• Online manual query