Proposed additional accident and incident reporting requirements have the potential to overload US business aviation pilots and operators with bureaucratic tasks, claims the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA).
The association's president and chief executive Ed Bolen has asked the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to consider whether expanding the list of reporting requirements for business aviation would be beneficial to the public.
The NTSB's notice of proposed rulemaking, which adds additional categories of event to the existing accidents and incidents that must be reported to the board, does not only apply to business aviation. Bolen has told the NTSB that it "has yet to fully explain the benefit to the public of increasing the reporting burden on business aircraft operators".
If adopted as applicable to business aircraft operators, Bolen says it will "add a significant paperwork burden to an already rigorous regulatory compliance process for our members, and in some cases could limit the operator's aircraft use".
The proposed new reportable events that Bolen quotes as particularly burdensome include the loss of cockpit electronic displays and the activation of traffic collision avoidance system resolution advisories.
In addition to these events, the NTSB proposes making reportable any incidents involving damage on the ground to helicopter main or tail rotors; the structural separation of a propeller blade, or a part of it, except where this was caused by contact with the ground; and "the failure of any internal turbine engine component that results in the escape of debris other than out of the exhaust path".
DAVID LEARMOUNT / LONDON
Source: Flight International
