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The FAA, responding to a years-long industry push, has kicked off a rulemaking that will expand mutual recognition of non-U.S. maintenance organization certificates through bilateral agreements.
“We’re doing it. We’ve entered it into rulemaking,” FAA Flight Standards Service General Aviation Group Manager Chris Parfitt said during the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) Annual Symposium on March 19. “It is going to be a permissive role. It will allow us to enter into a bilateral, mutual agreement. It does not force us to do so, and the details of any of those would be worked out within the bilaterals themselves.”
The change addresses a quirk of U.S. law that limits what international treaties have legal weight. Bilateral aviation safety agreements (BASA) are considered “executive” pacts that cannot supersede U.S. law, including FAA regulations.
Because of this, the FAA must issue its own approvals for foreign repair stations, even if the shop is in a country, such as France, covered in a BASA designed to encourage mutual recognition of similar regulatory standards. The only exception is Canada, because the FAA’s Part 43 regulation permits mutual recognition of Transport Canada-issued certificates to domestic aviation maintenance organizations (AMOs).
Most other countries face fewer restrictions, making mutual recognition within a BASA a common practice outside the U.S.
The proposed rule would expand the process to other countries and groups of states, including the European Union, that have a BASA with the U.S.
“We’ve been watching these bilaterals being inked by which, at least in the component space, you don’t need to have a certificate from the other authority, but the FAA by virtue of how part 43 is written, requires that you have an FAA approval,” ARSA EVP Christian Klein said. “What we’re doing is trying to tweak part 43 a little bit so that somebody with a foreign approval, it’s recognized under a bilateral by the FAA.”
Aftermarket providers have long sought more streamlined regulatory approvals to permit work on aircraft from around the world. Duplicative audits against similar sets of rules from different countries is costly and time-consuming while offering no safety benefits.
An ARSA-led coalition of 14 organizations petitioned the FAA in 2020 seeking a formal rulemaking. The group requested amended regulations “to enable reciprocal acceptance of AMO certificates issued by designated U.S. bilateral partners, and the approvals for return to service issued by those organizations,” the petition said.
“Industry’s costs to obtain and retain foreign AMO certificates would be eliminated completely if the domestic authority’s certificate and oversight is the only expenditure required to perform work for a foreign customer,” the group continued. “Adoption of the proposal would also allow agency resources to be directed at continued operational safety elements rather than expenditures to perform certification and oversight operations that are duplicative to the bilateral partner’s efforts.”
Parfitt did not put a timeline on the rule, but left little doubt that it is happening.
“It has gone through a rulemaking council, it’s been accepted, and it just received its [regulation identifier number]” that codifies it as a formal regulator action, he said.
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