FAA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on False Statements. MARPA filed comments in response to the NPRM today. The comments made recommendations about how to make the NPRM a stronger proposal.
In summary, MARPA supported the efforts to standardize and harmonize the false statements rules.
However, MARPA posted comments on some specific issues in the proposal that need to be changed. The proposal would have created a strict liability offense for unintentional mistakes, and MARPA opposed this. To understand the proposal, imagine that a manufacturing company makes a mistake on an 8103-3 tag. The normal process would be to recall the tag (and the part, if necessary) to correct the error. Under the proposed rule, the recall activity would be an admission of culpability under the penalty provisions, and the strict liability nature of the provision would have made it a violation to have made the mistake. This would create a perverse incentive in which a company might not correct an error because correction would reflect an implicit admission. In an era in which just-culture paradigms are encouraging reporting and error-correction, a rule that discourages reporting and error-correction takes us in the wrong direction.
You can find MARPA’s comments online at regulations.gov.
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