GAMA Execs: New Part 23 Rules Yielding Benefits

The FAA, working in tandem with industry, has made significant strides in implementing new Part 23 certification rules, according to industry leaders. “Thanks to the good working relationship with the FAA and with congressional oversight, things are moving,” said Wipaire president Chuck Wiplinger. “Things are going well,” he added, noting that industry and the FAA have already trained together as they collaborate to implement the new rules.

General Aviation Manufacturers Association president and CEO Pete Bunce said he is “absolutely convinced we are already seeing benefits” of the rewrite with new safety technologies coming on the market. “We’re in throes of running some projects through the process now,” added Piper president and CEO Simon Caldecott, who said that the main benefit is how the company demonstrates compliance. The new Part 23 regulation has dramatically reduced the number of rules the company must follow.

Most encouraging to Bunce, he told AIN, is the “sea-change of regulators really wanting to embrace this.” That applies to not only U.S. regulators, but also those in other parts of the world, he added, and pointed to recent revisions in the U.S.-European bilateral safety agreement that paves the way for speeding the process of validation and getting products to market.

A key to the change, the executives say, is that it moves certification from a top-down regulatory approach to a bottom-up approach to standards, with the certification and technology specialists working on the standards and moving toward an overarching safety goal. This also has opened the door to new products, Bunce added, noting it is facilitating the emerging urban mobility market.

Ric Peri, vice president of government and industry affairs for the Aircraft Electornics Association, said the benefits have long been evident in the avionics market, as the culture within the FAA changed during the rewrite process. The angle-of-attack indicator is among the most notable equipment that is now reaching market more expeditiously, but Peri said the rewrite has also brought a number of other avionics systems to market, including the Garmin G600 autopilot and Dynon D10A EFIS.