Liu Yanli was a featured speaker at the 3rd Annual Civil Aviation Parts Management Forum in Shanghai, China. Mr. Liu has a long title. He is a Senior Engineer from the China Academy of Civil Aviation Science and Technology, Civil Aviation Authority of China. The short version of this is that he’s from the government and he’s here to help.
He had a lot of useful information, but one comment that caused me to smile was his statement that “We should encourage use of PMA parts.” He seemed very optimistic about the prospects for both US and Chinese PMA.
Mr. Liu discussed the Chinese government’s PMA regulations and policies. The Chinese government has been approving domestic PMAs since 1988, and has approved more than 800 articles, spread across over 100 applicants. While this is a small sample, compared with the over 1.3 million PMA parts approved by the FAA, it shows that this is a growing market in China.
Mr. Liu heralded the latest revisions to the technical agreement between China and the US. Under that agreement, the US has agreed to accept most Chinese PMAs. The agreement was intended to be reciprocal- meaning that each authority will only accept the parts that the others accepts – so the Chinese actually decreased the scope of the PMAs that they accept. I have been assured that there were no safety objections to those PMAs; this was merely a technical barrier to trade imposed in order to “level the playing field.”
Most PMA parts are acceptable between the US and China. Mr. Liu explained that the only parts that are limited are those that are approved for aircraft for which the PMA authority (FAA or CAAC) is not the state of design of the aircraft AND the part is critical in nature. So there are no limits on acceptance of non-critical FAA-PMA parts, and there are no limits on acceptance of critical FAA-PMA parts for US state of design aircraft and engines.
Mr. Liu also discussed the standards for air carrier review of PMA parts being considered for use. We will cover these standards in the next post!
In response to questions, Mr. Liu admitted that some of the information that would be needed to asses a Chinese PMA part’s acceptability for import into the US is not publicly available. He suggested that the government might in the future adopt a database like the FAA’s PMA database.
Mr. Liu explained the importance of PMA parts, in terms of lowering costs and increasing reliability. He noted that for high dollar value items that are increasing in price, PMA represents an important competitive factor. He pronounced that “PMA definitely has a bright future in engine applications” because of the pricing trends in this area.
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