Navigating the FAA’s New “DRS” to Find PMAs

Looking for the list of PMA parts on the RGL? Can’t Find it? You are not alone.

The FAA is phasing out the Regulatory and Guidance Library (RGL) which has been found at rgl.faa.gov for many years. For many years we’ve been able to find the list of PMA part on the RGL. The FAA is replacing the RGL with the Dynamic Regulatory System, or DRS. The DRS is expected to have more information.

To get to the new system, you need to go to https://drs.faa.gov. Once there, look at the left hand side of the page and find the navigation panel. Click on “Design and Production Approvals.” This will cause a menu to open up and one of the selection options will “Parts Manufacturer Approvals.”

Once you’ve made it to the PMA list, you will notice some changes. One of them is that you have more options for placing the PMA parts list in order. There are now several new options that supplement the old order-by-date or manufacturer’s name functionality that we enjoyed in the RGL.

Another change is that you can search for information in the database based on particular fields – you used to have to download the database to do this.

There are some early complaints about the DRS. We’ve heard from OEMs, PMA producers and air carriers about their frustration with the DRS. Two important complaints are:

This latter complaint is rather serious. Under the RGL, the search engine allowed you to pull up all fields with a single search. This meant that inputting a Type Certificate Holder’s part number would show the user each of the PMA parts that had been approved as replacements for that part (as long as the record mentioned the TC Holder’s part number, somewhere). But now, the DRS requires you to limit searches to certain fields, and it does not allow you to search in the field entitled “Replacement For.” You can search by make and model, but that will give you all of the PMAs eligible for the aircraft, which is much less useful.

The inability to search in the field entitled “Replacement For” is a more critical problem, because air carriers and other installers need to be able to search by the “Replacement For” field in order to identify PMA options when the type certificate holder’s part is unavailable. This can happen for a wide variety of reasons, including type-certificate-holder lack of stock (resulting in long lead times) or exorbitant pricing (making the part unavailable on a practical level). It is also an issue when the type-certificate-holder no longer produces the part in question.

Being able to identify an FAA-approved alternative part can mean the difference between dispatching an aircraft on time or grounding an aircraft for lack of a single part. Because of this, we have already asked the FAA to add the ability to search on the “Replacement For” field in this database.

UPDATE: I was recently told to input the “Replacement For” number into the “PMA Part Number” field. Unfortunately this kludge only has limited utility. It will pull up PMA parts that have a numbering system that includes the number of the replaced part (as a verbatim element), but if the PMA part uses a numbering system that varies from this pattern then this kludge will not bear fruit.

For example, Honeywell P/N 3181768-1 has several different PMA replacements:

• Seal Dynamics P/N 3181768-1SD
• Jet Parts Engineering P/N 3181768JP-1
• Aviation Component Solutions P/N P00112
• Optimum Engineering & Manufacturing P/N 3181768-1WA

But if you run a search on “3181768-1” in the current database then you only get the Seal Dynamics record (which includes the Honeywell part number within its larger part number). You do not get the JPE record (which inserts a JP into the part number) nor the ACS record (which does not rely on the Honeywell number as a base).

I was able to pull the Optimum record from an older version of the PMA database (one that I downloaded) but their record no longer seems to exist in the current DRS database. It is possible that they surrendered their PMA, but if this is true a better practice would be to keep the record in the system, so that people would know that parts were produced under a PMA, but then have the database show when the PMA was terminated, in order to provide useful information to the public.

I hope that the FAA will be correcting this, soon. If you identify other problems with the new DRS database, then please let us know so we can address them as they are identified.