National aviation authorities (NAAs) today risk being swamped by the rate of technological advance, according to their leaders. At the same time many risk being starved of resources because aviation safety appears to have improved so much that governments are wondering if oversight could be done more cheaply.
The world’s two most influential oversight authorities, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), have already reacted by changing the way they oversee the aviation industry, but some critics are concerned that safety standards may suffer as a result. Both those agencies have moved to a regulatory oversight system now referred to as performance-based regulation (PBR). This has been passively accepted by most of the industry, but some worry that PBR is a cost-saving “cop-out” from proper oversight in favour of letting industry self-regulate.
In aviation’s exploratory early days when accident risks were high, regulators were seen as essential to maximise industry safety. Now, however, aviation – especially commercial air transport and top-end business aviation – is extraordinarily safe in statistical terms, and governments are looking for oversight economies as a result.
It seems everyone in the industry agrees that some oversight is still essential, so the issue to be resolved is how tightly – or loosely – aviation should be regulated. Some smaller or less prosperous countries in sub-Saharan Africa are questioning whether oversight should be done at a national level, and are working to share oversight resources regionally instead. Indeed, one tendency that is becoming increasingly visible through the influence of EASA/FAA harmonisation efforts, and through universal aviation standards and recommended practices agreed at the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), is that a globalisation of standards is gradually occurring. The question is, how are these standards to be policed?
One of the scenarios the sceptics now use to prove that industries cannot be trusted on health and safety issues – and thus must be monitored closely – cites the illegal deception that Volkswagen’s leadership deployed against the authorities to ensure its diesel vehicles passed exhaust emissions tests. Asked to comment on this, EASAs executive director, Patrick Ky, insists that aviation is very different from the automotive industry. Aviation, he says, has grown up over the century or so of its existence to be “very safety-minded”, adding that it is “more risk-averse” than car manufacturers. Although aviation is growing in size all the time, Ky observes that it is still not a “mass-production” enterprise serving a consumer marketplace in the way the automotive industry is.
How can Ky be so sure of aviation’s integrity? He points out that the certification requirements for all new aircraft and systems mean that “we work with them all the way – it’s an in-depth partnership”. Nobody, he says, questions this parallel partnership system because it has been proven over decades. “We know them very, very well,” he says. Is there not a danger of the regulator getting too close to the company? “Yes, there is, but we avoid complacency by rotating people through the certification jobs,” he explains.
Both Ky and the FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, Ali Bahrami, insist that the move to PBR acknowledges the agencies’ judgement that it is the only system that makes sense for today’s industry. Bahrami says the traditional prescriptive regulatory process cannot move fast enough to keep pace with the rapid change of technology. The answer, he says, is to “develop rules that are outcome-based”, then work with manufacturers to prove the outcomes are achieved – that is the process that defines PBR. Not all aspects of aviation can be regulated according to PBR principles, Ky points out, citing flight crew fatigue risk management as an area that demands traditional prescriptive rules and guidelines.
Both these regulatory chiefs agree that prescriptive regulation would stifle innovation and slow down the rate of technological advance which has contributed to falling accident rates over the past 30 years.
Bahrami points out that, for the software developers and equipment manufacturers, competitive advantage requires getting products out into the market quickly. He adds: “It’s important that we work with them early on so we can see where they are likely to end up.” Independently, both Ky and Bahrami cite drone development as an area in which a traditional approach to regulation would have asphyxiated a young and promising industry, but where partnership between the industry and regulators is essential because so many safety issues arise as a result of this completely new use of airspace by a completely new kind of aircraft.
Ky sees the aerospace industry as mature, and so by nature completely different from the way it was in its experimental and developmental years. Bahrami says the same thing in a different way: “Today, if you are an operator or OEM [original equipment manufacturer] with high standards, you don’t need to be threatened with a stick.” Ky insists this is not self-regulation, as the critics of PBR allege, because the industry has to convince EASA that a new product performs according to an accepted specification.
Regarding the oversight of equipment use once it has been certificated, Bahrami points out that “systems need to be tracked”. Ky agrees: “We have access to huge quantities of industry data; we can watch how they manage their business and their safety.” He describes the regulator-industry relationship as being one of “partnership, trust, review and auditing”.
The agency-industry partnership is evolving. The sheer engineering sophistication in today’s aircraft, and the dizzying pace of digital technology’s advance, challenges the level of independent expertise that the oversight agencies can be expected to recruit and retain. The same is true of customer airlines.
Recently there has been a subtle change in the advice the regulators give to airlines about how best to operate the aircraft and to develop their own standard operating procedures (SOP). When equipment was simpler and less sophisticated the airlines were provided with the manufacturer’s flight crew operating manual (FCOM), but given a lot of latitude for using their own initiative because their management pilots, engineers and operations managers understood the aircraft and their systems intimately. Now, instead, the regulators advise the airlines to use the OEM’s FCOM as the authority, and to deviate from it only in respect of particular operations unique to the airline, and then only after having consulted the manufacturer.
Despite the fact that regulators and industry agree that independent oversight agencies continue to be important for today’s aviation industry, there is some evidence that governments think the need to invest in safety regulation is waning. Commercial air transport is safer than it has even been – if measured in terms of fatal accidents only – so those governments which fund their NAA – and most do – are looking for a “peace dividend”. Ky notes that pressure for cost cuts at NAAs is increasing while at the same time aviation expands. One result, he says, is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the agencies to attract the necessary expertise because industry can afford to pay better. Some countries have a fee-based NAA, which charges the industry for its licences and services; those that don’t, says Ky, need to adopt such a funding system or risk being starved of resources and expertise.
It is increasingly the case, says Ky, that the aviation authorities of individual EU states are asking EASA for help to plug gaps in their resources and capabilities. Ky says EASA has no ambition to take over the roles of individual NAAs, because they act as its expert local agents, but EASA would be prepared to take over their function provided it were given the necessary funding to carry out that extended task. If some EU member states were to adopt such a centralised approach to oversight, that would mirror African moves to share resources regionally.
Meanwhile the FAA, despite being federally funded, is not seeing any financial squeeze, according to Bahrami. The funding philosophy is different in the USA, because the commercial air transport industry pays taxes that provide for FAA funding and, as Bahrami observes: “Congress recognises the importance of aviation to the economy.”
On both sides of the Atlantic the agencies recognise the importance of tailoring flightcrew and engineering training to the age of advanced technology flightdecks, because for a long time pilot training remained un-altered from the classic flying training of the 1950s, apart from a few additions such as crew resource management. Europe and America may have their own training styles and terminology, but both are now pursuing a policy of evidence-based rather than curriculum-based recurrent training. Evidence-based training (EBT) gathers data from relatively recently developed resources such as operational flight data monitoring (OFDM) to identify mistakes, inaccuracies or departures from SOP so they can be directly addressed in training, both at an airline and an individual level. Although this programme is still in the relatively early stages of implementation, and therefore extensive evidence of its effectiveness is not yet available, EASA and the FAA back EBT completely.
As regards the evidence forming the basis of EBT policy, Ky specifically mentions loss of control in flight (LOC-I), particularly in bad weather. He says he wants to see “much more à la carte training for situations pilots are likely to encounter”. And recurrent training should be scenario-based for the same reason, he says. Ky also insists that generic recurrent training is no longer good enough, and for that reason he is sceptical about the value of third-party training provision to airlines, unless an airline works very closely with the training provider so it can teach to its SOPs and react to the knowledge and skills needs of its pilots. Where airlines attempt to make training shortcuts, said Ky, “it is immediately obvious”. And they are always looking for shortcuts, he remarks wryly.
Meanwhile UK prime minister Theresa May has recently stated that Britain wishes to remain a member of EASA when the UK leaves the EU, but on what level has yet to be agreed. As a “third-country” participant in EASA, however, Britain has choices, Ky explains. It could sign up to a close relationship with EASA, like Switzerland, Iceland and Norway (all are EASA management board members), where regulatory alignment is complete and will remain so, or like the USA and Canada (bilateral agreements and working arrangements) in which the parties meet regularly for the purpose of maintaining regulatory harmonisation, and having done so generally agree to respect most of each other’s regulatory standards.
However EASA, like all other EU agencies, is subject to the European Court of Justice in the event of legal disputes between states over the interpretation of EU law, and one of the present UK government’s political “red lines” is that it will not accept ECJ adjudication. If the UK decides on a bilateral aviation arrangement with EASA rather than full membership of it, the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s resources will need to be brought back up to pre-EASA levels.
NAAs may be redefining how they do their job to cope with the dizzying pace of technological advance, but the way in which politics is conducted all over the world is also changing, and even autonomous NAAs will never be entirely free of political influence.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
