Avionics News April 2012 - 16

In this monthly column, Ric Peri of the AEA’s Washington, D.C., office, informs members of the latest regulatory updates.

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P E R I A EA V I C E P R ES I D E N T o F G oV E R N M E N T & I N D U ST RY A F FA I RS

Observations for Improvement

n February, I was asked on behalf of the Aircraft Electronics Association to address the Federal Aviation Administration’s Flight Standards regional technical and aircraft evaluation group manager’s meeting, and present the areas of most concern to the AEA membership and offer areas of improvement for the agency. The following is a synopsis of my presentation. I began my comments by acknowledging that the Flight Standards Division overall does a great job. It’s not perfect, but it’s great considering the scope of the work, the range of industries it oversees and the sheer size of its workforce. While the general aviation maintenance industry is the lower 10 percent (if not 2 percent) of the FAA charges, we recognize that commercial aviation, which is the other 90 percent, is a fabulous success story with a nearzero accident rate, thanks to the efforts of the FAA and specifically, Flight Standards and its counterparts, as well as the airline industry itself. While Flight Standards does a great job, because the general aviation maintenance industry is the minority sector of aviation, it bears the greatest financial impact for the sometimes less-than-perfect actions of agency personnel. The U.S. Small Business
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avionics news

Administration has dozens of reports highlighting the disproportionate administrative burden of regulatory compliance that small businesses bear. By design, the aviation regulations are size neutral, but the price to comply with those regulations is inversely proportional to the size of the organization.

go down this path, let me state that the majority of inspectors are consistent in their application of the rules. Again, not perfect, but not a failure either. However, there is room for improvement. At the same time, industry needs to become smarter in the regulations, guidance and policy in order to de-

While Flight Standards does a great job, because the general aviation maintenance industry is the minority sector of aviation, it bears the greatest financial impact for the sometimes less-thanperfect actions of agency personnel.
The AEA offered comments on six observations: 1. Consistency. 2. Field approvals. 3. Inspector training. 4. Previous administrator approvals. 5. Manuals and administrative burden. 6. FAA Order philosophy. mand consistency and appropriateness in regulatory oversight. Consistency and standardization are two sides of the same coin. Several years ago, the AEA supported an early beta test of organization delegation authority called authorized designated engineering organization service (ADEOS). In the program, we attempted to provide consistency in the application of avionics installation data to the membership. Unfortunately, we simply didn’t have enough standardization in the projects to leverage consistent, repeatable data. Just as there are no two installations exactly the same, there are

consistency – not Standardization

The recent FAA reauthorization bill included language requiring an agency review for consistent application of regulations and guidance. Before we

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Avionics News April 2012

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