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CONSULTATIONS
Consultation is key
Could this be a threat to our Permit to Fly… Steve Slater reports
The word ‘consultation’ seems to be a fashionable buzzword at the moment, whether it is born out in actual listening by those involved is of course another matter. Currently we’ve got more than 20 airspace change consultations on the go, but two recent consultations on other subjects stand out, as they could have potentially serious implications on how we fly in the future.
CAA FUTURE PERMIT AIRWORTHINESS CONSULTATIONS
After much to-ing and fro-ing over an 18-month period, the CAA has moved to a public consultation stage on their review of the BCAR CAP 553 regulations by which they delegate their authority for permit to fly aircraft airworthiness to the BMAA and LAA. As I wrote in CEO Thoughts last month, both Associations queried the need for this, but were merely told ‘it’s in the programme’.
A bit of background
The LAA (and previously PFA and ULAA) approvals from the CAA date back to 1948, when the first agreements to delegate oversight of aircraft on Permits to Fly were developed with the Ministry of Aviation. Then, in November 2013, after more than three years’ work by a joint CAA Airworthiness and LAA Engineering team, the current A8-26 publication was drawn up for the ‘Approval of Organisations Supporting Recreational Aviation’.
The actual agreement is part of a wider CAA regulation, British Civil Airworthiness Requirements, known as BCAR or CAP 553, and its Section A has two segments which are of direct relevance to the LAA and BMAA. Section
A3-7 states that it establishes the measures to be taken to ensure that the aircraft remains airworthy and includes details of the maintenance to be carried out. It also specifies the conditions to be met by the persons or organisations involved in such continuing airworthiness management.
A8-26 is effectively one step down from this and is the mechanism by which the CAA delegates the oversight privileges to an approved organisation. It is, of course, dependent on each bit of the approval meeting the requirements of A3-7. We then demonstrate our compliance with A8-26 by the production of a comprehensive Exposition and Engineering Procedures Manual (EPM), to which we are regularly audited, either internally via our Quality Manager ‘Taff’ Stone, or externally by CAA Surveyors.
The devil is in the detail
So, what’s being changed and why is it important? While all of this may appear as dull as ditchwater at first sight, these documents regulate the whole airworthiness oversight processes of both the BMAA and LAA, and some of the changes will likely fundamentally change the way we process, in particular, Permit renewals. If they go ahead in their present form, they may also lead to added costs as
we, and you, and your inspector, will have to add extra layers of administrative oversight to each permit renewal application.
At first sight, the wording at the start of the consultation is innocuous. It states that The changes to Chapter A3-7 have been made largely to reflect the introduction of the new privileges in A8-26. There have also been minor updates to reflect the UK’s withdrawal from the EU and EASA.
So far, so good but the actual terms of the ‘consultation’ only reflect the items to which the CAA has proposed changes. There has been no working group, such as with the 600kg and ab initio training projects, to look at it in the round. Effectively the CAA is saying, ‘we’ve come up with this, now go away and get on with it’. Actually, it’s a huge, missed opportunity for us to all work together to develop something newer and more flexible for the future.
Worse still, the proposals for the two CAA codes add additional requirements for us to demonstrate levels of compliance which are higher than those used for larger GA and commercial aircraft, certainly disproportionate to light aircraft being flown for recreation and inspected by volunteers. In fact, the new EASA Part ML regulations are now more flexible than the revised A3-7 and, as the CAA has proposed not to amend A8-25 for CAMO maintenance organisations, it remains more flexible and less proscriptive. We believe that as a red line, we should not be required to operate under more onerous requirements than the certified world.
What can we do about it?
The public consultation runs to 27 May and we recommend that all LAA members at least take time to look at it online and prepare to comment. Currently we are continuing to work through the point-by-point detail of the proposed changes and reviewing the wider documents of the approvals as there appear to be other elements, which have been changed in recent years, which have not been included in this review or consultation. We will aim to post our guidance on key areas and our responses on the LAA website by 14 May, and recommend you look out for these and frame them in any response you might wish to give. The link to the CAA consultation document is at https://tinyurl.com/ynubhcbx
OFCOM LICENSING CHANGES
This was a case of the ‘consultations that never were’ from our point of view, in that we were never even told they had happened. But at least, we hope, we can still influence a positive outcome.
You may recollect that back at the beginning of March, many radio licence holders got, out of the blue, a letter from Ofcom stating there would be changes to the holder’s radio licence conditions requiring compliance with new regulations. This caused significant disquiet, not least because even our technical experts struggled to unravel the technical gobbledegook in the letter. A triumph of plain English it was not!
The Ofcom licensing changes are apparently driven by a need to meet internationally agreed guidelines on electromagnetic fields (EMF) to help ensure services operate in a way that will not adversely affect health. These guidelines include limits on EMF exposure for the protection of the general public, including a requirement to calculate a minimum safe distance from transmissions.
Ofcom had held two consultations on the matter last year, but in neither of these had the aviation sector been consulted. We (and the Royal Yachting Association, who are similarly affected) both sent letters of complaint to Ofcom, asking them for an explanation of their oversight and for greater clarity around just what they are seeking.
That resulted in a meeting between Ofcom and LAA Engineers Jon Viner and Joe Hadley, and we have formally requested, in view of their flawed consultative process, that any licence amendment activities in association with aviation be deferred until appropriate impact assessment and mitigation reviews are carried out.
It is clear from our research that the risk to uninvolved third parties from light aircraft radio transmissions is minimal. It is also noteworthy that Ofcom wishes to comply with advice from ICNIRP (the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection – since you ask) which were initially just guidelines. These were then interpreted by HSE in the UK as appropriate guidance. Ofcom have then elected to escalate this to a mandatory requirement by amending license conditions. We have queried the basis for this.
At the same time, we have agreed with Ofcom that we are happy to assist in achieving their desired aim of ensuring EMF protection, by offering proportionate guidance based on the ICNIRP guidelines. In its current form, the proposed Ofcom requirements indicate that all equipment that transmits with an output power greater than 10W EIRP must be assessed.
As we discussed at our recent technical meeting between ourselves and the Ofcom team, this impact would be mitigated by an amendment to requirements to state that only equipment with an output power greater than 10W EIRP, after factoring for the amount of time transmitting within a six-minute period, need be assessed. For a VHF transmitter this typically results in less than 10%, and 0.5% for a transponder. Using these criteria, virtually none of the installations in the recreational aviation fleet need further technical assessment.
We are now working with Ofcom to produce aviation-specific guidance for licence holders that will include practical, step-by-step instructions for demonstrating compliance, that will help members to achieve the anticipated requirements. We’ll keep everyone apprised of progress and we’ll ultimately produce an LAA Technical Leaflet for further guidance.■
