Aviation Business Journal 4th Quarter 2012 - 67

NATA Maintenance Perspective
A New and Improved Part 145?
By Carol E. Giles
O
n May 21, 2012, the Federal
Aviation Administration
(FAA) published a Notice
of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)
to revise the FAA’s Part 145 repair
station regulations. The regulation
has been in development and revision
since 1999. That is when the first
NPRM was written that set the stage
for the 2001 final rule. The change was
needed to increase the harmonization
between the United States and
the European Aviation Safety Agency
145. Additionally, as stated in the 1999
NPRM, the language in the rule at the
time was no longer appropriate and
had become increasingly difficult to
administer. Sounds familiar, doesn’t
it?
When the 2001 final rule was
published, there were some controversial
topics that were not addressed;
namely, the rating scheme and the
addition of a quality assurance program.
The FAA formed an Aviation
Rulemaking Advisory Committee
(ARAC) to address those two topics.
The ARAC turned in its recommendations
to the FAA, and in 2006 the FAA
published another NPRM that was
withdrawn in 2007 because it failed to
address the current business practices
in the industry.
This brings us to the present, with
the FAA once again publishing a new
and re-blued NPRM. The main goal of
the FAA is to clean up the unfinished
business of ratings and to address
more fully the significant changes in
the repair station business model. The
quality assurance portion of the rule
was dropped due to the impending -
nearly inevitable - safety management
requirement from International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO), which
the FAA is planning to meet with its
own safety management rule — That is
a topic for another day!
The three major areas that the FAA
proposes to address are the rating
system, certification requirements, and
repair stations that provide maintenance
for air carriers. Additionally,
there is a section in the NPRM that
also refers to “Other Changes.”
One of industry’s big concerns is the
proposed regulatory requirement section
of the preamble. Read that section
carefully, it is like the fine print in a
pre-nuptial. This is where the FAA discusses
the transition from the existing
rule to the new rule, the numbering of
the new regulations, and compliance.
The FAA is going to allow repair
stations, certificated before the effective
date of the final rule, to continue
to comply with the current regulation;
and those repair stations will have
24 months to show compliance with
the revised rule. The FAA says it is
proposing the 24-month transition because
the new regulation requires revisions
to manuals and other documents
that must be reviewed and accepted by
the FAA. Sounds pretty harmless; however,
there are a couple of hooks.
First, the repair station manual
and the quality assurance manual are
“acceptable to,” not “accepted by” the
FAA. That is one huge discrepancy
with the preamble in the proposed
rule, the language in the NPRM, and
the current language in Part 145.
Nothing has changed with regard to
the manuals being acceptable to the
FAA, so why does this preamble state
the manuals have to be accepted by the
FAA? If the manuals are acceptable to
the FAA, then the process of revising
and submitting them is the same as
it has always been even with the new
rule. Repair stations should be able to
submit their revised manuals and go
on with business.
Another part of this section in the
NPRM’s preamble is the requirement
that every repair station, certificated
before the effective date of the rule,
would have to apply for certification
under the proposed rules if it intended
to continue to operate uninterrupted.
If there is still doubt that this is a
recertification, then read on to the
part of the preamble where the FAA
Continued on page 68
Aviation Business Journal | 4th
Quarter 2012
67
Aviation Business Journal 4th Quarter 2012

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