This Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) addresses a safety, economic and regulatory coordination issue related to the provision of data for airspace users for the purpose of safety-critical air navigation.
At the 2003 FAA/JAA International Conference, it was agreed that an improved control of data held in aircraft navigational databases is essential as an enabler to support the implementation of the Performance-Based Navigation (PBN). Already, through Opinion No 01/2005, the Agency offered the industry a voluntary audit system leading to the issue of a Letter of Acceptance by the Agency to the European database suppliers.
In 2009, the European co-legislators extended the Agency’s remit to ATM/ANS. The implementation of the amended Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 requires the Agency to execute certain regulatory tasks to address the safety objectives laid down in Annex Vb, including point 2(a) on aeronautical information and data.
The overall objective of this rulemaking task is to promote cost-efficiency in the regulatory and certification processes and to avoid duplication at national and European level. Furthermore, alignment of the scope and requirements of the rules ensuring regulatory harmonisation with third countries would be clearly beneficial.
Therefore, the specific objectives are:
- to develop the specific organisation requirements and responsibilities applicable to Data Services (DAT) providers as well as the associated technical requirements for the provision of data services; to avoid double oversight of these service providers by the competent authority and by the operators contracting their services; and to ensure that the SES objectives on interoperability with respect to data used on aircraft systems are achieved.
This NPA proposes amendments to:
- the draft Regulation on ‘Requirements for service providers and the oversight thereof’ as proposed with CRD to NPA 2013-08; and
- Regulation (EU) No 965/2012 (AIR-OPS) and the related AMC/GM.
The proposed changes are expected to maintain safety while reducing the regulatory burden for the regulated parties by decreasing the oversight activities performed by the aircraft operators and by the competent authorities as well.
