WASHINGTON, D.C. — The General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) is celebrating the passage of the Small Airplane Revitalization Act, H.R. 1848, by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Introduced in the House by U.S. Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) in May — along with other original co-sponsors Congressmen Sam Graves (R-MO), Dan Lipinski (D-IL), Rick Nolan (D-MN) and Todd Rokita (R-IN) — the bipartisan bill requires the FAA to implement the recommendations of the FAA’s Part 23 Reorganization Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC) by Dec. 31, 2015.
The ARC’s goal is to double safety and cut certification costs in half for light general aviation airplanes.
The bill, which was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) also in May, passed the Senate last month and now heads to President Obama for his signature.
“On an overwhelming and bipartisan basis, Congress has given important momentum to critical reforms that are needed at the FAA,” GAMA President and CEO Pete Bunce said. “H.R. 1848 is an emphatic statement that overly prescriptive FAA regulations and inefficient bureaucratic processes that unnecessarily lengthen certification timelines and add significant costs must be replaced if we are to promote safety and growth in general aviation. While much work remains, especially on the part of FAA, passage of this legislation significantly improves the industry’s ability to accelerate safety enhancements in light GA aircraft and will stimulate additional high-quality manufacturing jobs throughout the entire general aviation industry.”
We must get some common sense back in to the overall equation!! I know this theory is hard to come by and has typically been thrown out with the bath water, but we must put it back in the way we think. When the guys in the FSDO are not allowed to apply solid and substantiated information toward issuing a field approval, we have lost it. I like the comment in a prior response regarding light bulbs. With new LED technology power consumption goes down, service life goes up and the ability to burn your lights all the time can only help with collision avoidance. C’mon, issue an order to allow this change immediately, wtihout jumping through hoops and giving up your first born! I sure hope the new legislation with help and not hinder the survival of GA. When you spend every day at the airport and you see fewer and fewer daily airplane movements, we must create and demand changes in the way we have thought and done business in the past. If the experimental side of the business has proven the technology, lets cross pollinate and make it better for all of us.
Hopefully this will aid in modernization of the fleet. The FAR’s requirements are not that difficult for light aircraft the problem is the FSDO and ACO office personnel that require additional test or certification of the test procedures. Using ASTM standards like the LSA aircraft could add to the cost by having to buy all the standards and procedures that are readily changed. As Vaughn Price pointed out a private organization or individual can charge what they want and if they are the same entity that determines what tests and reports need “approval” it could get very expensive quickly. When the inspector was FAA they were provided “at no additional charge” as our taxes have already paid for them. Now we have to pay additional for a designee, whether flight or maintenance and it is still scheduled at their continence. This is good for their income and bad for the industry as a whole.
The main reason everything is so expensive in aviation is because it is a very small nitch market. From fuel to the cost of electronics. Now add the FAA into it and you have a perfect storm equaling high prices.
Why can I use a certain strobe bulb in your experimental but not in my Piper? Both do the same thing. If it was good enough for the experimental why can’t the Piper use it?
I think the problem here is the FAA needs to set certain standards for parts and the manufacturers have to meet the standards and not worry about whether it is going into a RV-7 or a Cessna. This would immediately bring the cost of parts down for the little guy. I know of no other consumer industry where each part has to be tested and certified for use. In other industries the parts just have to meet standards. Heck we already do it with Mil spec and AN spec parts. Just expand this philosophy.
One only has to pick up an Aircraft Spruce catalog to see the thousands of parts that are OK in an experimental but not a certificated airplane. Does Joe’s light bulb really have to be tested in every type of plane out there? Ridiculous.
Set a standard, for a bulb, X brightness, X beam height and width, X bulb type etc. Then let the market do it’s job. Why are LED landing lights 4X higher than the same bulb on the open market? I would think with lower power draw and longer life the FAA would want everyone to retrofit with LED’s. Much safer.
Don’t we both fly in the same airspace? In many of these cases the product could actually make our planes safer, more dependable, yet they can’t be used, why? So many of the technical rules are antiquated.
Clearly there is a role for some very small government oversight in aviation. If you don’t agree you are not old enough to remember the airliner collision over the Grand Canyon. Having said that the FAA should be an advisory role. Profit and litigation will take care of the rest of the issues. None of this is why GA is in decline. GA is in decline solely because fuel prices are unadulterated theft. Signature charges as much as $8.00/gal for 100ll. All my flying career avgas was about $1.00/gal above car gas. All the postulating by gas gurus and the like is just BS. Avgas is high because FBO’s built monuments to themselves that affect the GA flyers in no useful way. Millions have been spent on airport improvements that didn’t improve the airports. Now flights are down, the FBO mortgages go on and they must charge way too much for the few of us left flying. Speak to them with your wallet. ONLY by gas from the cheapest places possible, preferably non-national brand FBO’s even then only when the fuel is cheap.
If a bit less government meddling is good, than no government must be great. The contrary is now becoming obvious to even the least attentive with the ACA meltdown. The secret to the success of the home building movement and LSA class designs is the freedom from the FAA. ASTM peer-designed guidelines, the powerful profit motive and self-policing in EAA chapters has led to growth and technological advancement, not top-down, antiquated governance from D.C. bureaucrats. Can we imagine a world without the FAA? Why not?
Next is to break the strangling costs of taking a flight test from a designee who is authorized by his buddies in the local Gado to charge, as I have been quoted, $ 600.00 dollars for an Instructor recertification In my own Aircraft. I have over 15000 hrs general aviation and have owned 2 large part 141 flight schools. no wonder general aviation is in heavy decline