This Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) addresses safety and regulatory coordination issues related to the standardised European rules of the air (SERA). Its main objective is to maintain a high level of safety and environmental protection of the European Union (EU) air navigation system, by ensuring the necessary maintenance and development of the SERA regulatory framework.
In order to achieve this objective, this NPA includes proposed amendments to Regulation (EU) No 923/2012 (the SERA Regulation) and to the related acceptable means of compliance (AMC) & guidance material (GM), which:
- ensure synchronisation between the SERA regulatory framework and the originating transposed International Civil Aviation Organization (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 Regulation, 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 in Europe;
- address issues in the implementation of the SERA Regulation as either identified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) through its standardisation activities or raised by stakeholders; and
- remove editorial mistakes and identified consistency issues.
The NPA also includes minor proposed amendments to GM related to Annex IV ‘Part-AIS to Regulation (EU) 2017/373, for consistency purposes.
A safety recommendation addressed to EASA, related to the inclusion of information on ballistic parachutes on board in the flight plan, is also addressed by this proposal.
