As a result of the work undertaken under RMT.0476, EASA is pleased to announce the publication of NPA 2022-04 on 25 May 2022, proposing amendments for a comprehensive update of the SERA IR (Regulation 923/2012) and of the related AMC and GM.

The proposals issued with this NPA:
• ensure synchronisation between the SERA regulatory framework and the originating transposed International Civil Aviation Organizaton (ICAO) provisions, especially those of ICAO Doc 4444 ‘PANS-ATM’ up to its Amendment 9, in particular in relation to new procedures on standard instrument departures (SID) and standard instrument arrivals (STAR) and other provisions identified as being of a ‘rules-of-the-air’ nature;
• introduce changes to the existing radio communication failure procedure in anticipation of a future amendment to ICAO Annex 2, thus bringing forward in time the related operational benefits;
• remove the Supplement to the Annex to the SERA IR, containing the commonly agreed differences to ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs), and introduce regulatory references to Regulation (EU) 2018/1139 on the notification of differences;
• introduce speed restrictions to prevent supersonic flights over the territory of the EU, with the objective of protecting citizens from unacceptable sonic booms generated by supersonic transport (SST) aircraft, in order to maintain a high level of environmental protection;
• address issues in the implementation of the SERA IR as either identified by EASA through its standardisation activities or raised by stakeholders;
• satisfy a safety recommendation addressed to EASA, related to the inclusion of information on ballistic parachutes on board in the flight plan; and
• remove editorial mistakes and identified consistency issues.

This NPA is available at the following link of the EASA public website: NPA 2022-04 - Regular update of the SERA regulatory framework (IRs and AMC & GM) | EASA (europa.eu); comments may be submitted until 25 August 2022 through the Comment Response Tool (CRT) at http://hub.easa.europa.eu/crt/.