Category: Aviation

Uncertain rules

Simon Whalley’s[1] analysis shows that there’s a lot that remains uncertain.  Even with the UK exploring the terms on which the UK could remain part of the European Aviation Safety Agency [EASA] there is no assurance of success.  If an accommodation is achieved there’s still the thorny problem of being subject to rules that will be put in place without a UK vote for or against.

It might be that the undeclared strategic aim of the UK Government is to diverge from the European framework of rules.  That would make EASA membership a transitional arrangement.

Given my experience, I’m forced to look at the evolving situation as the past gone into reverse.  In the 1990s we were slowly but surely moving away from British Civil Airworthiness Requirements (BCARs) towards European ones as being organised by the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA).  This progressive movement, of over more than a decade, created the stepping stones that made EASA possible.  If we put all that into administrative reverse it will take a couple of decades to get to a situation of greater autonomy.  Even that will not mean absolute control given the UK’s obligations within the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the large number of bilateral agreement that will need to be put in place to replace the European ones.

I don’t deny that divergence may have one or two benefits.  However, I will agree that the costs of divergence far exceed any of the potential benefits or, at least, that is the experience of the past.

Take the case where there is a major fatal accident of a civil aircraft on British soil.  Post-accident, there is the potential to change aviation rules faster if the only consideration is a domestic outcome.   Divergence will then certainly then arise quite rapidly.  What can be bad about that?  Well, there are a couple of issues.  Rapid rule changes can be highly politically driven running the risk that the true nature of a technical problem is not addressed.  Also, given the extremely rare occurrence of fatal accidents there’s a lot to be gained from aggregating information.  If all energy and effort is focused on national problems much can be missed.  In other words, the accident that others have maybe the accident you have tomorrow, if you don’t pay attention.

Pro-Brexit reporters have commented; if Australia and New Zealand can do it why can’t we?  That is; to not have an empowered regional organisation addressing aviation.  Also, such remarks have been addressed about the Gulf States.  Look at these large aircraft operators and they don’t have an EASA, do they?

The truth is complex.  A lot of these simple analogies don’t stand up to scrutiny.  In fact, at international level more and more regional groupings are being established and recognised by ICAO.  Also, the highly integrated and interconnected nature of design, production, maintenance and operations in Europe does mean we are not like any other global region.

Although we (UK) are in reverse gear let’s hope that a handbrake turn takes place before we hit the barrier.

[1] https://www.aerosociety.com/news/brexit-and-easa-a-way-forward/

 

Smart move

IMG_1713Over the last couple of decades there’s been a freeing up of civil aviation in Europe.  It’s the reason for that £40 return ticket to a sunny destination, weekend city breaks or an adventure.  At the same time, bar a small number of tragic events, it got safer to fly.  That’s a remarkable achievement.  Each of us can get to more places more cheaply and more safely than ever before.  As is human, its easy to take this all for granted as if it would have happened whatever we did.  Now, that’s a big mistake.  Behind the scenes, huge efforts were made to change aviation and its associated regulation.

Europe has been remarkable successful liberalising markets and getting competition to give the passenger what they need and want.  For those of us who remember the mediocre service and high cost of flying with State airlines in the 1980s, the transformation is clear.  For the millennial generation who take international traveling as a given its difficult to image a world any different.

So, what has been the key to this achievement?  Yes, the entrepreneurial spirt of those who established the low-cost carriers played its part.  However, their efforts needed a transformation of the environment in which the business of flying took place.  This is where the European Union (EU) has been particularly smart.

The liberalisation of aviation markets as a matter of competition policy is one thing but it’s not enough on its own.  Just liberalising markets can be a disaster.  It can mean a race to the bottom of the barrel and commercial pressures that chip away at good industry practices.

That’s why regulation is not only beneficial but it’s essential.  Now this article will not consider competition policy, but it will discuss aviation safety regulation.  Because the civil aviation industry cannot thrive unless safety is a priority.

In Europe, discussions on the establishment of a European aviation safety body date back to as early as 1996, but it was only in 2002 that the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) was established.  The Agency started life in an office in Brussels and then it moved to Cologne in Germany in 2004.

EASA did not come out of thin air.  Previously, there was cooperation between the EU and the administrations of many European states within the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA).  Having realised much in the way of harmonising standards, JAA was a club like organisation and had reached its limits, particularly on the legislative front, for its lack of authority.

The EU’s competences in transport are set out in the EU treaties.  These treaties provide the basis for actions the EU institutions can or cannot take.  Transport is a ‘shared’ competency.  What that means is that either the EU or the Member States may act, but the Member States may be not act once they have acted through the EU.  On this front, EASA was established by the Regulation (EC) 1592/2002.   It was designed and built on the experiences and cooperation of the former Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA).   It works with all the national authorities.

With these developments, there’s no doubt consumers have benefited from a wider range of choice, both in locations served and in quality and type of service.  Most of all aviation safety is number one.

Continuing Airworthiness

Airworthiness can be considered as the sum of: initial airworthiness and continuing airworthiness.  Roughly speaking, the first is the work that goes on before an authority issues a Type Certificate for an aircraft and the second is what happens afterwards when it goes into service.

So, let’s assume we have an aircraft designed, manufactured and certificated in accordance with a set of requirements ready to enter service.  It’s imperative that the aircraft is properly serviced and maintained, and problems are fixed as they are discovered.

To achieve this a continued airworthiness programme is needed to support an aircraft in service.

Included within this is the need for a maintenance programme.  The reason for maintenance is to control the rate of deterioration of an aircraft.  This is achieved by two types of maintenance.  The first is preventive maintenance that relies on inspection and repeated activities to identify and fix problems.  The second is remedial maintenance, which includes repairs, and fixing a problem after an abnormal event (heavy landing, bird or lightning strike etc.).  All the above can be done for each aircraft as it is needed and set against an agreed schedule.

However, the story doesn’t end at that point.  A continued airworthiness programme takes lessons learned from experience and applies them not just to one aircraft but to a whole fleet of the same design.  It’s a philosophy that requires problems to be identified and reacted to with the aim of preventing their recurrence.  That could be lessons learned from accidents, incidents, occurrences or analysis that wasn’t routine or planned.

Airworthiness is an integrated activity and so all the above impacts the approvals, processes and procedures that are applied.  To undertake the work of continuing airworthiness there are approved organisations and licenced personnel to certify that work has been properly completed.

These are few words to describe an extensive system that works on a global scale.  Airworthiness is a vital component of aviation that is ever vigilant so that we can fly safely.

Airworthiness Certification

Airworthiness is about past, present and future.  It’s about aircraft, procedures and people.  Its about design, manufacturing, maintenance, repair and overhaul.  That said, when it comes to what people do and the life-cycle of an aircraft there are two distinct phases.  Put simply, one is all the work that goes on before an aircraft enters service and the other is that work done for an aircraft in service.  The end of the life cycle of an aircraft doesn’t get nearly as much attention.  It’s is a subject that is of growing interest, as the afterlife is all about recycling and reuse of aircraft components.

Back to the two phases and they can be called; Initial Airworthiness and Continuing Airworthiness.  Each has its own ways of doing business, technical language and even its own specialised professions.  Here, I’ll rough out a description of Initial Airworthiness based upon how they are seen from the regulatory point of view.

Initial Airworthiness goes from the first concept of a new product, through design and manufacture all the way up to the day that a Type Certificate (TC) is handed over.  That Type Certificate is a declaration that, an aircraft type meets a given Airworthiness Code.

If you ask why?  The place to go is an international document called ICAO Annex 8.  This contains, in broad terms, the technical standards concerning Airworthiness.  There are 192 ICAO Contacting States[1].   However, the number of ICAO States that design and manufacturing large aircraft for commercial use is small.

In principle, each ICAO States can establish its own Airworthiness Code.  In practice, most ICAO States select an established code and adopt it.  There are two major global players in this field; one is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the other is the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).  So, if you want to make a new large aircraft and operate in most places in the world, the first step is to secure a Type Certificate from either FAA or EASA or both.

Before I get into trouble, there are other Airworthiness codes and some historical ones too.  Canada has its own code.  Britain and France originally had their own codes.  It was the development of the Concorde supersonic aircraft in the early 1970s that led to the move towards a common European code.  It’s a challenging and difficult business maintaining and updating such codes especially if they must address the latest advanced technology.

From initial application, and the setting down of a certification basis, to the day of granting a Type Certificate, analysis and testing are demanding and rigorous.  Industry and Authorities specialist, in every aeronautical field are dedicated to ensuring that certification achieves its objectives.

Now, the Type Certificate is a measure of the fitness to fly of a type of aircraft.  Once that has been secured the next step is to get a Certificate of Airworthiness (CofA) to say that an individual aircraft complies with the agreed type design.  Then an aircraft is fit to fly.

[1] https://www.icao.int/MemberStates/Member%20States.English.pdf

 

Airworthiness – what’s that?

Now, I get asked the question: what is Airworthiness?  Now you might think the answer was easy.  Just for an analogy you might say; there’s Roadworthiness and Seaworthiness too.  Strangely enough the words; Spaceworthiness and Railworthiness are quite valid but not so often heard outside their fields.  Thus, Land, Sea, Air and Space are all covered.

With a different focus the word; Crashworthiness is often used.  Finally, new to the fold is the up and coming term of Cyberworthiness.

Unsurprisingly, these words are all associated with fitness, legality, safety, soundness and reliability.

In definitions my preference is for simplicity.  Several dictionaries go for the unpretentious definition of airworthiness as: “Fitness to fly”.  Now there are lot of implications associated with that level of brevity.  An aircraft one person considers fit to fly may be totally unfit in the eyes of another.  But, at least those three words get the general concept across because no one would want to knowingly fly in an unfit aircraft.  As one of the classics in aviation quotations sums up nicely: “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.[1]”

The next element is legality.  It’s not enough say; this aircraft is fit to fly so jump on-board and let’s go.  From the first days of flying it was quickly recognised that accidents and incidents were going to happen.  Some would be fatal.  Gradually a whole framework of legislation grew-up around flying with the aim of addressing the risks to aviators, their passengers and to the public.

In the early months of 1944, the US Government invited 55 Allied and Neutral States to attend a conference in Chicago.  This forward-looking proposal was to take on the issues and problems that were arising as aviation became more international.  52 States turned up and the outcome was the Convention on International Civil Aviation.  This Chicago Convention was signed in December 1944

Airworthiness was not the first concern of this gathering but the process that followed soon realised that international standards and practices were going to be needed.  So, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) was born.  Under Article 37[2] of the Chicago Convention, ICAO is obliged to adopt international standards addressing the airworthiness of aircraft and the licencing of personnel.

Airworthiness became a measure of an aircraft’s suitability for safe flight.  ICAO defines the word “Airworthy” as the status of an aircraft, engine, propeller or part when it conforms to its approved design and is in a condition for safe operation.

For practical purposes, Airworthiness can be considered as the sum of:

  1. An aircraft designed, manufactured and certificated in accordance with requirements;
  2. A continued airworthiness programme to support the aircraft in service;
  3. A maintenance programme to ensure the aircraft is properly serviced and maintained and
  4. Availability of licenced personnel to certify that tasks associated with the above have been properly completed.

Here you can see that Airworthiness has become an aircraft plus a process to assure suitability for safe flight.  Today that’s what it is as interpreted and implemented across the globe.

[1] Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. c. early 1930’s.

[2] https://www.icao.int/publications/Documents/7300_orig.pdf

 

A European approch to Airworthiness

The JAA’s work began in 1970 (when it was known as the Joint Airworthiness Authorities).  Originally its tasks were to produce common certification codes for large aeroplanes and for engines.  This was to meet the needs of European Industry and particularly for products manufactured by international consortia.  From 1987, its work was extended to operations, maintenance, licensing and certification/design standards for all classes of aircraft.

The Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) was an associated body of the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) representing the civil aviation regulatory authorities of many European States who had agreed to co-operate in developing and implementing common safety regulatory standards and procedures.  This co-operation provided high and consistent standards of safety and a “level playing field” for competition in Europe.  Much emphasis was placed on harmonising regulations.

The JAA Membership was based on signing the “JAA Arrangements” document originally signed by Member States in Cyprus in 1990.  The objective was to ensure, through co-operation amongst Member States, that JAA members achieve a high, consistent level of aviation safety.  In addition to achieving a cost-effective safety system to contribute to an efficient civil aviation industry.

This situation changed in 2002 as a new regulatory framework was created for European aviation.  With the adoption of the Regulation (EC) No 1592/2002 by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) the setup of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) was given the green light.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), formally started its work on 28 September 2003, taking over the responsibility for regulating airworthiness and maintenance issues for the EU Member States.  EASA moved into its first headquarters in Cologne, Germany in November 2004.  At its early stages a roadmap was established to manage the transition from the JAA to the EASA system.

In November 2005, the EU Commission began the legislative process to amend EASA Regulation (EC) 1592/2002 to extend the competences of EASA into the fields of operations and licensing.

The ECAC Directors General decided to disband the JAA system from 30 June 2009 but to keep a JAA Training Organisation.  Thus, Europe established one harmonised set of regulations for airworthiness.  Those regulations continue to develop to take on the new challenges aviation faces.