Avionics News December 2012 - 15

R e ga r d l e s s o f t h e p o l i t i c s i n Wa s h i n g t o n , w h at i s c l ea r i s t h e n e e d fo r wo r l d w i d e a u s t e r i t y m ea s u r e s a n d t h e e ff e c t t h at t h e s e m ea s u r e s w i l l h ave o n A E A m e m b e r c o m p a n i e s .

Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. Section 312 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 required the FAA, in consultation with the aviation industry, to conduct an assessment of the aircraft certification and approval process. The Aircraft Certification Process Review and Reform (ACPRR) ARC submitted the following recommendations to the director of aircraft certification on May 22, 2012: 1. Development of comprehensive means to implement and measure the effectiveness of implementation and benefits of certification process improvements. 2. Enhanced use of delegation. 3. Integrated road map and vision for certification process reforms. 4. Update Part 21 to reflect a systems approach for safety. 5. Culture and change management. 6. Process reforms and efficiencies needed for other AIR functions. The AEA also is an active participant of the FAA ARC’s Small Airplane Directorate initiative to rewrite Part 23, which is an active international initiative with representatives from Europe, North America, Brazil, Australia and China. The final product will likely be an internationally accepted standard for small aircraft based on the aircraft’s performance criteria rather than an arbitrary weight. As the discussions continue, it appears the final product will represent the FAA retaining the “performance-based” safety standards while the acceptable means of demonstrating compliance to the regulations migrating from government standards in the form of advisory circulars to industry consensus standards, such as ASTM International or SAE International. While this may sound like a huge jump, it’s actually not.

An aircraft currently uses hundreds, if not thousands, of industry standards today. Every fastener, all of the structural materials, fabric, and particularly, avionics, rely on industry consensus standards. Nearly every item of modern avionics’ foundation rests with an RTCA standard, while most of the legacy instruments conform to SAE standards. Our participation in the latest rulemaking committee is on the FAA’s Part 21 Safety Management System Aviation Rulemaking Committee. The objective of the ARC is to evaluate certain improvements to the effectiveness and efficiency of existing certification procedures for products and parts, along with incorporating SMS in the design and manufacturing environment. This includes considering the effects of changes to the existing regulations covering applicant qualifications, hazard reporting, compliance assurance and continuous operational safety for all design approval holders. Because this committee just kicked off in early November, there isn’t anything of substance to report at this time. The last major FAA issue for the year was the Part 145 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The FAA published the NPRM in late May with a 90-day comment period. To facilitate this timeframe, the AEA utilized many of its newer Internet-based communications mediums. We conducted three one-hour Web-based seminars to review the proposal and followed up with open discussions of the individual topics via the AEA communications forums. We joined with other industry associations in early August to request a 90-day extension of the comment period, which we received extending the comment period to Nov. 19. This extension allowed us to utilize our more traditional meeting tools, and we conducted thorough
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Avionics News December 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News December 2012