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This category contains 222 posts

MARPA issues White Paper on Illustrated Parts Catalogs, PMA and Copyright Law

MARPA has published a white paper explaining the intellectual property ramifications of sharing a page from an illustrated parts catalog in support of an FAA-PMA application. In order to produce an aircraft part in the United States, the producer typically needs to obtain design and production approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).  A parts … Continue reading →

What are Instructions for Continued Airworthiness?

What do you think Instructions for Continued Airworthiness are? MARPA is participating as a member of the Instructions for Continued Airworthiness (ICA) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). The ARC’s next task is to produce a short statement identifying what ICA are. There are many pages of the regulations and still more pages of FAA guidance material … Continue reading →

Can FAA Production Oversight Be Improved?

Section 314 of the FAA Reauthorization Act requires the FAA to examine its production oversight, including the risk-based decision making approach to allocation of manpower to facility oversight.  This affects the oversight decisions made by FAA Certificate Management Sections (previously known as MIDOs). This is a potential opportunity to influence the system for FAA audits … Continue reading →

New Safety Management Systems (SMS) Rule

The new Safety Management Systems (SMS) regulation will be published on Friday April 26. A pre-publication version of the rule is currently available for inspection. The new regulation will expand the applicability of FAA’s SMS rule to include type certificate (TC) holders and production certificate (PC) holders. It will also expand the scope to include … Continue reading →

MARPA Supports False Statement Rules, But Opposes Penalties for Unintentional Mistakes

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 … Continue reading →

Minor Changes to FAA PMA Policy

This morning, the FAA circulated Change 2 to the FAA Order 8110.42D. FAA Order 8110.42 is the internal FAA order that tells FAA employees how to process PMA applications. It has been very important for PMA applicants to read it in order to now how to assemble a PMA application so that it is acceptable … Continue reading →

The Impacts of Secondary Cockpit Barriers on the PMA Industry

FAA to Require Secondary Cockpit Barriers on Newly Manufactured Commercial Aircraft.On June 14, 2023, more than two decades after the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that it will require secondary cockpit barriers on the flight deck of new commercial airplanes. This is a new rule that … Continue reading →

MARPA Files Formal Comments on Safety Management and on Systems Safety

MARPA has filed formal comments on two recent rulemaking activities: SMS and Systems Safety. In both cases, the comments are intended to improve the rules and make them more useful to protect safety in the global aviation system. Continue reading →

MRO Americas: “Unprecedented PMA and DER Demand”

I attended the MRO Americas Conference this week in Atlanta, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear tremendous support for PMA. One focus area is supply chain, and supply chain disruption. Several airlines pointed out that supply chain disruptions were mitigated by PMA manufacturers who were able to provide supply chain alternatives. Kevin Michaels moderated … Continue reading →

Systems Safety: New Rule Could Affect Part 25 PMA Applications

On December 8, 2023, the FAA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) titled “System Safety Assessments” (87 FR 75424). In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to amend certain airworthiness regulations to standardize the criteria for conducting safety assessments for systems installed on transport category airplanes. This would result in additional new analysis requirements under … Continue reading →