Rather as the UK and USA are described as being divided by the use of a common language, it now appears that Europe's Joint Airworthiness Authorities (JAA) and the USA's Federal Aviation Administration are divided by the use of increasingly common standards. In the old joke about language, there was little at stake apart from national pride and individual embarrassment. In the current impasse over which certification standards should be applied to the latest versions of the Boeing 737 and to the McDonnell Douglas MD-90, there is a lot more at stake.
The impasse centres as ever on the question of whether every theoretical gain in safety should be demanded from an industry, which is endlessly enhancing safety anyway. The 737-700, for a host of reasons, will be safer than the identically sized 737-300. Recent regulations would in principle make it safer still, but at a severe economic and competitive cost. Against that, other manufacturers - and unfortunately from a political viewpoint, it is Europe's Airbus Industrie which is primarily affected - have had to design from scratch to meet those requirements with non-derivative designs. Understandably enough, Airbus, which has to compete against Boeing's derivatives, is not enthusiastic about its rivals being let off the hook. Under the circumstances, one really has to have some sympathy for the JAA, itself a product of a new era, in making its judgements.
These disputes over the latest derivatives of elderly US designs raise fundamental issues. Can US/European harmonisation ever work in relation to existing designs and their derivatives? Perhaps not. Can either side realistically expect that these derivatives should be evaluated against standards, which were in place right at the start of the jet-transport era, almost as if the lessons of the last 30 years should be ignored? Perhaps not.
There is no evidence to suggest that either the JAA or the FAA (or, indeed, any person or group within either body) is acting from anything other than the purest motives. Yet the suspicion remains in some circles that there is more to do with the NIH (Not Invented Here) factor in this dispute than there is with genuine concern about the safety of these latest airliners. It is a dangerous allegation to make, particularly for US manufacturers whose national authority is explicitly tasked with supporting national interests. That situation does not apply to the JAA.
It is also clear that, in some respects, the Europeans have been justified in their insistence on different standards from those being imposed by the FAA. The case of cabin-floor venting in the Boeing 747-400 was a good case in point, where the Europeans probably made a better decision than had the FAA.
Even if this particular impasse is overcome, the fundamental problem will still remain - and it will affect other countries, not just the USA and Europe. It is relatively easy to write new joint regulations looking forward, to cover new clean-sheet designs. It is much more difficult to look backwards, to see whether something, which satisfied an earlier standard should meet a new one.
It is not a problem, which will go away: the world is seeing fewer, not more, totally new aircraft designs. More and more, "new" designs are extensions of existing ones, because economics preclude the development of totally new ones. The problem will be here for decades, and the certification authorities and manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic will have to accept that. One senior JAA official suggests, that it is a positively good thing, that it is having to deal with this issue on so many aircraft so soon - it will at least concentrate the mind, he believes. He is surely right. If there is to be any real progress, the JAA and the FAA need to step up their harmonisation process, painful though it is. The alternative is an industry blighted by the spectacle of two aerospace communities divided by a common concern of safety - and that is no joke.
Source: Flight International
