European Plan for Aviation Safety 2022-2026 was Published & Role of AEI in It
Feb 03 in AEI News
EASA has issued an updated version of European Safety Plan and described its approach for risks that may be a factor against flight safety standards.
One of the most important topics in the document was the COVID-19 pandemic and aviation after this pandemic era. At the same time new technology aircraft and UAVs will be included in the Plan’s considerations.
Environmentally EASA is mainly focused on Sustainable Air Fuels and Hydrogen fuels, those will serve zero emission goal.
Contributions of AEI
We are especially a big contributor and follower on maintenance staff competency and authorisation rules in Europe, therefore an important partner of European authorities and EASA. In the EPAS, AEI has its place.
The main activities which AEI involved in with regard to the Plan were;
– RMT.0255 Review of Part-66
– RMT.0544 Review Part-147
Additional to groups we directly participated in, 2 other initiatives were put into use following our representations to EASA.
– SPT.0106 Prevention, detection and mitigation of fraud cases in Part-147 organisations
– MST.0035 Oversight capabilities/focus area: fraud cases in Part-147
Also in the 3rd volume of EPAS, the safety mitigations were listed after classification. One of the AEI’s input to EASA has been the lack of proper reporting and handling of repetative defects. This factor contributed to the 2009 Turkish Airlines Amsterdam Crash. This warning was also reflected in EPAS as a commercial Air Transport Safety improvement “Management of repetitive defects on safety-critical systems (SI-0050)“
NPA 2014-11
Under the Safety topic, the very first issue “RMT.0097 Functions of B1 and B2 support staff and responsibilities“ the plan says;
Introduce principles for increased robustness of the maintenance certification process eliminating potential ‘safety gaps’ by clarifying the roles and responsibilities of certifying staff, support staff and ‘sign-off’ staff, both in line and base maintenance.
Notice of Proposed Amenedment NPA 2014-11 which is “Functions and responsibilities of B1 and B2 support staff – link with sign-off“ emphasizes the importance of licensed maintenance personnel, is also remained in the program thanks to strong and persistant efforts of AEI.
This NPA describes fundamentally the responsibilities of B1 and B2 certifying staff and support staff on supervising the work done by unlicensed staff. It is also clarifying the procedures for sign-off by unlicesned staff in. There are still things to discuss before this NPA is sent to Brussels as an Opinion. We expect to involved in all the details of this process.