The European Aviation Safety Agency has adopted a new rule, known as the “Basic Regulation,” which updates the mandate of EASA and sets out more pragmatic methods to regulate the sector appropriately, GAMA said this week. “This lays the foundations for an EASA 2.0, the result of a mammoth effort from EASA, the EU institutions and stakeholders,” said GAMA President Pete Bunce. “Industry, however, will see little change until the underlying technical rules are in place. We now have the ‘what’ but we still need the ‘how.'”
Regulators expect it will take up to five years to update EASA’s current rules, including those that cover operations, certification and airworthiness. “A key element in the new performance-based approach is to ensure that regulations focus on safety objectives rather than prescribing rigid solutions that cannot keep pace with technological innovation,” according to GAMA’s news release. “We need to see a significant improvement in how new safety rules emerge, to avoid industry of all sizes treading water for years to come,” added Bunce.
