One of the most overquoted, but least-obeyed, engineering maxims is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Some of the few things that ain't broke in this world are corporate-aircraft safety and reliability. So it was odd enough that Europe's Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) ever thought it necessary to consider placing restrictions on long-range business-aircraft operations over water - and even odder that the JAA thought it necessary to consider stricter regulations than the Americans had also thought up for the same issue.
For some time now, the US Federal Aviation Administration has been proposing the imposition of airline-style ETOPS (extended-range twin-engined operations) rules on business-jet operators flying long distances over water. The FAA's plans are for restricting business jets to flying no more than 180min from the nearest diversion airport. This despite the fact that (according to the National Business Aircraft Association's Jack Olcott, who should know) in 30 years there has not been a single ETOPS-style fatality recorded in business-jet operations. Far from getting less reliable, business aircraft and their engines are becoming more reliable as each new design comes into service - so not much broke there.
The JAA, however, thought that even this intrusion was not unwarranted enough, so its JAR-OPS committee went one stage further and proposed a 120min ETOPS rule. This was in the same tradition as other fine JAA rulings such as its insistence on fitting stick-pushers to everything with a T-tail, whether or not it has ever demonstrated even the vaguest hint of susceptibility to the deep stall. Hundreds of McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80/MD-90 airliners perform thousands of safe landings every day in FAA-certificated form in the USA without stalling; a few dozen in Europe have to land 5kt (9km/h) faster than their US sisters to avoid triggering their JAA-mandated stick-pushers, but do not have a measurably better safety record for it.
Thus it was to be with business jets. With no evidence of European-operated Gulfstreams or Canadair Challengers being any less reliable or safe than their identical US-domiciled sisters, the European ones were to be restricted to 120min ETOPS. This meant that a non-stop transatlantic flight was no longer an option for many operators. The least-safe parts of any flight are the take-off and landing; the safest part is the cruise. So the JAA wanted to add two extra less-safe phases to each flight - in the interest of safety.
Fortunately, reason appears to have prevailed (although nobody outside the JAA yet knows how reasonable its change of heart is). The JAR-OPS committee seems to have fallen into line with the FAA, and is proposing a 180min ETOPS regime for suitably equipped and operated business aircraft. To what end?
It is unlikely that anybody who has regularly and safely operated a big business twin across the Atlantic for the past ten years will feel any more safe from knowing that the same aircraft, operated in the same way, is now certifiably less likely to suffer an engine failure in mid-flight. Certainly, the FAA and JAA cannot know that for sure. The relatively small numbers and flight-hours of big business twins mean that their operators and manufacturers can never demonstrate the flight-experience required of the typical airliner before ETOPS certification, so approval can only be on the back of the experience of those previous safe operations.
Big-twin airliner operators are not allowed to run ETOPS-style operations until they can demonstrate exemplary records in non-ETOPS flying. Big-twin business-aircraft operators never were restricted, but now they will have to pay somebody to tell them that if they continue doing what they are already doing, they will be safer than when they were doing it before.
It will be hard for the industry to measure how much better off it is as a result of the imposition of ETOPS rules, simply because it was never worse off in the first place. This is not an argument against legislating for improved safety, but it is an argument against legislating unrealistically. The business-jet community and the JAA both have better things to do with their scarce time and money than fighting each other over fixing things that still ain't broke.
Source: Flight International