The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is today urging the UK aviation community to become fully involved in EASA’s ongoing consultations on the development of Implementing Rules. The consultation follows the extension of the European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) remit to aircraft operations and personnel licensing. While EASA now has further responsibilities for rulemaking, the CAA is still responsible for enforcing flight operations regulations and issuing certificates and licences in the UK. All Implementing Rules must be in place and be applicable by no later than 8 April 2012 and, in order to meet this timetable, EASA has already started consulting on draft Rules. Consultations are currently underway on Flight Crew Licensing and medical regulations – both of these consultations run until 15 October 2008.

The CAA will be contributing to each of the consultations but, to ensure that the views of the UK’s aviation community are recognised, also encourages all stakeholders to take part. Details of both of the ongoing consultations and also several upcoming ones can be found in the table in the Note for Editors of this release.

The consultation documents, known as Notices of Proposed Amendment (NPA), are available on EASA’s website at http://easa.europa.eu/ws_prod/r/r_npa.php where there is a link against each NPA to the Comment Response Tool (CRT) established by EASA to receive comments. Comments can be entered directly into the CRT after a simple one-time registration.

Commenting on EASA’s new responsibilities, Mike Bell, CAA Group Director Safety Regulation, said: “EASA’s new roles in both licensing and operations are significant changes to aviation’s regulatory framework.”

“We are determined to play a proactive role in all of EASA’s upcoming consultations to ensure that we can influence the rules they set, which we will remain responsible for enforcing. Alongside our inputs we would strongly encourage industry to get directly involved with EASA in each of these consultations.”

The following sets out some of the key points of the proposals set out in the current consultation documents on the FCL and Medical rules. Under these proposals:

• The CAA will continue to issue UK pilot licences.
• The new regime will simplify the licence structure and rules for UK pilots.
• Class 1 and 2 medical certificates will be issued in the same way as before.
• The Leisure Pilots Licence (LPL) medical certificate may be issued by an Aeromedical Examiner (AME), Aeromedical Centre (AeMC) or a General Medical Practitioner.
• The CAA will continue to approve and oversee UK Flight Training Organisations.
• Some not presently covered by UK legislation will be covered by the rules e.g. glider pilots and those flying foreign-registered recreational aircraft.
• There will be exclusions for those flying aircraft not covered by the EASA Regulations e.g. those engaged in police and search and rescue services.

Until the new rules are implemented, existing legislation will apply e.g. the Air Navigation Order.

Source: Civil Aviation Authority UK
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