The FAA SMS Rule is Here

The FAA will publish its Safety Management Systems (“SMS”) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) in tomorrow’s Federal Register.

This long-awaited proposed rule has been scaled back from the original scope (manufactures and maintenance organizations) and only appears to apply to:

• Passenger-carrying operations (including those under 14 C.F.R. § 91.147, Part 121 and Part 135)
• Type Certificate (TC) holders whose TCs are under production
• Production Certificate holders

There will be an exception for production certificates that are based purely on a supplemental type certificate (STC), and not on any type certificate.

The proposal would also make many small changes to the existing Part 5 (SMS) standards.

The proposal appears to have facial flaws. For example, under the “Examples of Real World Scenarios,” there is only one real world scenario listed for manufacturing. It involves a scenario in which warranty data might have predicted a failure. The problem is that the proposed regulation does not require scrutiny of warranty data – such scrutiny would be an OPTION for implementation. A logical option. But not a required option. The manufacturing scenario also suggests that service difficulty reports could have also predicted the failure, but service difficulty reports are notoriously imprecise i their details, which means that the service difficulty reports are often only useful after an incident that ties them together, but they may seem like disconnected issues before such a tying-incident. This is a fault of the service difficulty system, which can result in two identical issues being written to seem like two different issues, or being written so vaguely that root cause cannot be accurately discerned.

Despite the flaws, the proposal takes the U.S. aviation manufacturing industry one step closer to the Congressionally-mandated obligation for aviation manufacturers to establish SMS programs (Public Law 116-260 (Dec. 27, 2020)). That law required application of SMS requirements to “manufacturers that hold both a type certificate and a production certificate issued pursuant to section 44704 of title 49, United States Code, where the United States is the State of Design and State of Manufacture.” Id. at § 102(a)(1).

Even if this rule does not apply to PMA and TSOA manufacturers, there is a strong likelihood that commercial pressures will force PMA and TSOA manufacturers to adopt SMS programs that are analogous to the regulated programs. Such pressures could include both operators and repair stations seeking SMS as a best-practice among their sources, manufacturers in the new parts supply chain who insist on flowing-down SMS requirements, and/or foreign purchasers whose governments impose SMS requirements that have already been adopted n the destination country.

In addition the proposed rule would require SMS-holders to share hazard information with the relevant interfacing entities who, to the best of their knowledge, could address the hazard. An example in the NPRM has an aircraft manufacturer disseminating hazard information to its parts suppliers and software suppliers. This probably means that those who supply PC holders will ultimately face a flow-down of SMS requirement from their business partners.

Because we anticipate such commercial pressures to adopt an SMS analogous to the FAA’s regulated SMS, MARPA has been establishing tools and resources to support its members who choose to voluntarily adopt an SMS program.