Aircraft certification reform continues to advance

Today, more than 81,000 of the 188,000 certified piston-powered aircraft on the FAA registry are worth less than $40,000, with a weighted average value of $25,800, yet a new, single-engine airplane will cost a pilot more than $500,000—well outside the reach of most families.

Under the revised Part 23, the FAA has given aircraft designers and manufacturers flexibility and options for means of compliance, including consensus standards, manufacturers’ internal standards, or the prescriptive means contained in the old Part 23 amendment. Additionally, the regulatory framework is more flexible in adapting to new technologies. For example, “engine” has been replaced with “power unit” in paragraph 23.900, which ensures that the framework includes liquid fuel, electric power, or other power sources not yet envisioned. These are subtle but important changes that must take place in order to advance the overall goals of flexibility in certification without stifling innovation.

The new Part 23 and its performance-based standards establish a level of performance that must be achieved through the airplane’s design, rather than dictating how a manufacturer should arrive at a particular level of performance. The change to paragraph 23.10 requires a company to show the FAA how it would meet the intent of Part 23 for a specific product or design change. The new options include a “consensus standards” option, which means that the demonstration process meets a set of standards established by the aviation industry and accepted by the FAA and other authorities.

Previous Part 23 weight and propulsion were based on assumptions that do not reflect the diversity of performance capabilities, design complexity, technology, intended use, and seating capacity of today’s airplane designs, or the future airplane designs that will become possible as technology continues to evolve. Additionally, the adoption and migration to performance-based standards help to incorporate the FAA’s air transportation safety continuum philosophy, as it not only promotes innovation in aviation, but also reduces the high costs associated with certifying safety-enhancing equipment. The rewritten regulations have the flexibility to adapt to new and unforeseen technologies while affording the industry confidence that they will be able to bring new and novel ideas to market. Once mature and both fully implemented and accepted, the revised regulations will afford industry manufacturers the opportunity and incentive to innovate and will give confidence that the FAA has a means to review and accept the new technology in a timely and cost-effective manner.

For example, current Part 23 crashworthiness and occupant safety requirements are based on seat and restraint technology from the 1980s. Former certification standards required that an applicant demonstrate crashworthiness by a sled test. New standards in Part 23 do not require a sled test, as the performance-based regulations provide flexibility on how to meet the broader crashworthiness objective. This flexibility may lead to new safety-testing methodologies as well as advanced safety technology.

To put this process in context, consider the following example: ASTM International is an organization that uses committees composed of international government representatives and industry groups to establish standards. The various committees develop technical consensus standards for a range of different industries—including aviation. Suppose ASTM publishes a consensus standard for the development of an electric propulsion system using batteries and fuel cells as fuel. This ASTM-consensus standard would serve as a potential “means of compliance” to satisfy the new Part 23 fuel system performance-based standard. The ASTM-consensus standard would then be sent to the FAA and other international civil aviation authorities for their review and acceptance. If accepted, any individual or company can then satisfy the new performance-based regulation in Part 23 by complying with that particular ASTM standard.

Because the rewritten Part 23 and standards will take time to mature and become widely used for certification of new airplanes, the FAA has also included benefits for the existing fleet. At the current rate of new aircraft production, replacing the entire fleet with modern, safer aircraft will take decades. AOPA feels strongly that updating the existing fleet with new equipment and technologies can provide one of the greatest safety benefits relatively quickly.

According to an article published in the May/June 2019 issue of FAA Safety Briefing magazine, the Part 23 rewrite and the associated ASTM consensus standards have allowed Garmin to bring cost-effective, safety-enhancing technologies to a segment of the market that has expressed interest in low-cost solutions, such as the G5 electronic flight instrument and the GFC 500 autopilot. According to Phil Straub, Garmin executive vice president and managing director of aviation, “The full benefit will take time, particularly for aircraft manufacturers to create aircraft designs that raise the safety bar by complying with regulations in innovative ways that were previously discouraged.”

“AOPA has and continues to remain engaged in identifying ways to improve the certification process,” said David Oord, AOPA senior director of regulatory affairs and AOPA’s representative on the ASTM International committees. “We’re excited to see the possibilities of this regulatory change and anxious to encourage the development of new aircraft designs and to see our existing fleet, which still has plenty of life left in it, benefit from new more cost-effective safety-enhancing systems and upgrades.”

Oord assures that AOPA will continue to push so that new standards are developed and then available for manufacturers to use as a means of compliance. Ultimately, AOPA members, and all aircraft owners and pilots, will benefit from this work—from upgrading their existing aircraft to new and exciting aircraft designs.—by Gina Piellusch