Originally Posted by
osuav8r
I personally (through some connections I had) got a friend hired at Skywest who had a foreign commercial license and got an FAA private pilots license on the basis of his foreign certificate. The ONLY FAA cert he had was a private pilot certificate. He was right at ATP mins, no degree, and as far as I can recall, met all of the other requirements. This was a little bit of an unusual situation, but the OP asked if it was possible......
Not unusual. If you hold a foreign Commercial or ATP certificate the FAA will convalidate that into a Private Certificate based on that foreign certificate, and if you go through an ATP and type Rating training you will get an FAA ATP with that type rating, no longer subject to your foreign certificate.
https://www.faa.gov/licenses_certifi..._verification/