GA Praises FAA Coordination, Mulls Lessons from Shutdown

Industry leaders attending the General Aviation Manufacturers Association’s (GAMA) recent State of the Industry event agreed that the business aviation market entered 2019 on a stronger footing, but also conceded that the partial government shutdown that ushered in with the New Year will take months to resolve. “This has been an interesting start of the year,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce during the annual GAMA event held in late February.

Bunce had previously pointed to the work slowed during the shutdown, particularly on the certification front, and has detailed that the restart required manufacturers to readjust schedules to get back into an already full queue for FAA resources. But he also credited FAA senior leadership for providing as many resources as possible, as the law permitted, during the shutdown to coordinate on workflow.

Bunce further noted that the shutdown underscored the importance of organization delegation authorization (ODA). Over the past decade, GAMA has been pushing for greater use of ODA to make certification processes more efficient. Without it, “we would have been dead in the water” during the shutdown, he said. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful,” but under the partnership with FAA and with programs such as ODA, “we were able to work our way through.”

Gulfstream president and GAMA chairman Mark Burns agreed that ODA was “invaluable” but acknowledged the shutdown did backlog projects. Gulfstream parent General Dynamics had reported that the shutdown pushed certification of the company’s ultra-long-range G600 into the second quarter.

Burns noted that there were a number of lessons learned that the industry is working out with the FAA. “We need to capture the lessons learned,” agreed Bunce, pointing out one area that was spotlighted was just how much paperwork the FAA is involved in. This is an area that can be examined to see ways to ease that involvement.

But at the same time, Burns, who detailed industry deliveries that were up across the board in 2018, was equally upbeat about prospects of the year, discussing the improved position of the industry coming into 2019. “2018 was a good year,” he said, adding the U.S. economy was certainly a factor as well as growth in Europe. “As we start 2019, we are in a stronger position than we were the start of last year.”

Future Gets Closer

While they reviewed the results, the leaders also discussed the evolution ahead for aircraft, the push toward biofuel and development of future workforces, among other issues confronting the industry.

Bunce highlighted the rapid development of the electric and urban mobility community, pointing to changes even within the association. GAMA formed its Electric Propulsion and Innovation Committee (EPIC) in 2015 to focus on emerging technologies and urban mobility. What began as a core group of 11 companies has grown to 79 global companies that are “looking at where this new revolution in aviation is going,” he said, emphasizing that a consensus exists among the community that “this is as important to aviation as the dawn of the jet age.”

Bunce further stressed that the timeline is accelerating. “A lot of people didn’t think this was going to happen until well into the 2020s. It is happening now,” he said, noting executives this week held meetings with top regulators at the FAA about certification basis for these vehicles.

Anna Dietrich, an eVTOL policy expert who co-founded Terrafugia, agreed, saying, “The time is now.” A number of credible players have joined the market, Dietrich said. As for certification, Dietrich said eVTOL developers are benefiting from the Part 23 rewrite, which was intended to facilitate the development of new technologies. However, she cautioned that getting these vehicles into the air will not happen overnight. The industry will have to take a crawl-walk-run approach on integration, beginning with set corridors that have yet to be controlled and expanding from there.

On biofuel, Bunce pointed to activities during last year’s EBACE show in Geneva. They included a joint industry declaration committing to promoting the development of sustainable alternative jet fuel (SAJF); he also cited the release of the Business Aviation Guide to using SAJF. The industry since followed up with the event in January in California, where SAJF was offered at all the FBOs at Van Nuys Airport and manufacturers such as Bombardier and Gulfstream brought aircraft to demonstrate flights with biofuel. The next step for such a demonstration at this upcoming EBACE, Bunce said. “It is up to us as an industry to figure out how to build demand so we can start getting supply,” he said. “If we do not do this we will not be able to meet the mandates we have… for environmental sustainability." While acknowledging business aviation is a small contributor to overall CO2 emissions, he noted a lot of attention is being paid in Europe and elsewhere to this sector. “It’s imperative for us to move forward with this initiative.”

Industry leaders at the GAMA event also highlighted the need for workforce development. A major theme was through attracting new interest in the schools and development of STEM programs. The industry is in competition for future workers, he said. “We need to communicate [an aviation position] is a good job and its an exciting job,” Bunce said.