Part 135 Training Changes Coming Soon

The FAA is expected to soon release an Advisory Circular that will pave the way to move toward a new standardized training curriculum for Part 135 operations, industry leaders learned during last month’s 2019 Air Charter Safety Symposium. More than 135 charter executives registered for this year’s Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) event, many of them attending for the first time.

This year’s symposium provided an overview of changes for Part 135 training through Part 142 centers. The FAA last fall released a draft AC that industry executives believe will enable one of the most significant changes in training approaches for charter operations in years. Under the approach, a collaboration of industry experts and the FAA will jointly develop a standardized curriculum for each type of aircraft for which simulator training is available.

This is expected to affect a broad swath of operators because upwards of 95 percent of Part 135 jet operators and 65 percent of Part 135 operators across the board use Part 142 centers for training.

The draft AC, based on the recommendations of a government/industry aviation rulemaking committee, drew about 200 comments, resulting in a few changes, said FAA aviation safety inspector Mark Valette. While progress slowed slightly during the government slowdown, David Underwood, regional director of regulatory affairs for FlightSafety International, said he expects the final AC to be out shortly.

Once released, an industry/government Training Standardization Board will be stood up—likely later this summer—to submit training standards on an aircraft-specific basis. Teams will be gathered to look at curriculum for various aircraft. Valette encouraged attendees of ACSF to get involved in this process, stressing this is their training programs. In fact, Valette emphasized in his years at the agency “collaboration with industry has never been as great.”

Underwood, meanwhile, outlined the many benefits of the optional standardized training, including that it may be carried from employer to employer as long as they accept the standardized approach.

It will streamline the approval process and apply across instructors approved for the specific programs.  Further, said Underwood, a standardized approach ensures that pilots are trained to the same skillset, based on best practices and industry knowledge. The programs can be updated as necessary.

Upgraded Standards for Part 135

Improved training is one area highlighted by John DeLisi, director of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Office of Aviation Safety, who also spoke at last month’s ACSF event. DeLisi noted the Safety Board had added Part 135 safety on its latest “Most Wanted” list of transportation safety improvements and pointed to lessons that could be learned from successes in Part 121 safety.

These include controlled flight into terrain avoidance training, along with flight-data monitoring and safety management systems. DeLisi detailed accidents where these were lacking, including the May 2017 crash of a Learjet 35A. The Safety Board was reviewing its findings of that accident, involving an unstabilized approach into Teterboro Airport, that same day as the ACSF symposium. (See article on page 12.)

Update on ASAP

One key safety program that ACSF is administering for Part 135 and 91 participants is the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), which provides a mechanism for voluntarily reporting and mitigating safety issues in a “non-threatening” environment.

Randy McDonald, the ASAP program manager for the FAA’s Air Carrier Training System and Voluntary Safety Programs branch, provided an update on the ASAP to symposium attendees, noting his agency is making it more flexible to encourage even greater participation.

These changes are designed to make the partnership agreements less restrictive for participants, McDonald said. Companies have had to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the FAA to participate, but this will change to a less restrictive partnership agreement. He characterized the current MoU as a nine- to 10-page document “filled with dos and don’ts.” This will now be streamlined to a smaller document that focuses on about a handful of aspects of the partnership: roles and responsibilities, how it will function, how decisions will be made, guidance on managing data, and how the partnership could be terminated.

In addition, the FAA is committing to remove administration actions—meaning no letters of warning or correction—as long as a report is accepted into the program. He stressed that employees must be “incentivized” to come forward, but disciplinary actions only serve to chill such activity.

Other changes ahead include the timeliness of the ASAP reports and activities, he said, noting that should be left up to the company on what works best rather than a predetermined timeline.

The changes come as the ACSF-administered programs have now collectively generated 4,000 reports, 90 percent of them from a sole source.

Bryan Burns, president of the ACSF, credited the ASAP program to the dramatic growth of the association in recent years, with membership now approaching 200.

The two-day ACSF event, themed "Promoting the Highest Levels of Aviation Safety,” also addressed safety culture, the new charter broker rules, data and analytics, stick-and-rudder skills, a deeper dive into recent accident case studies, and a town hall with NTSB vice chairman Bruce Landsberg.