FAA Test Pilot Regulations
I attended the NTSB Experimental Aircraft Safety Seminar yesterday at Ashburn, VA. Very good session and well run by NTSB.
During Q/A, someone asked when the FAA would have the draft test pilot regulations out. The person from the FAA, Tom Glista, FAA Manager of GA operations branch AFS-830, said it would be out in Jan 2014, but that he needed AOPA and EAA and other industry members to come to some agreement on what they should be.
Questions:
1. What is this all about? Why do we now need FAA regulations in this area?
2. The EAA rep (Tom Charpentier) said there had been meetings on this topic at AV. What did EAA do and what is their position on this topic?
Big Brother or We should take the initiative
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Tom Charpentier
Thanks for attending the presentation, and sorry if we confused you. What Tom Glista and I were talking about was a proposal that would allow a second pilot to fly with the builder during Phase I. Since this is not currently allowed we would need a set of requirements for that second pilot to meet to ensure that they actually add safety to the flight testing process. There is no proposal on the table to regulate solo test pilots, and we have consistently opposed any attempt to do so.
This would be an optional alternative to the current Phase I rules, which allow any appropriately rated pilot to fly the aircraft as long as they are solo. These rules would not change.
Thanks again for coming, and I hope you enjoyed the talk! If you have any other questions feel free to ask.
Tom
Tom,
Could you describe what some of the proposals are? I guess this is going to be another one of those "Freedom" vs Government knows best arguments.
I can not believe that any Aircraft builder would needlessly risk additional personnel. I also don't want the classic government over-engineered solution. There are parts of the flight test process where having more than one person can help and actually make it MORE safe. Heck even the OEMs have more than one person on many flights. Of course they have the luxury of having real time telemetry to capture many data points also.
On the second topic of the FAA presentation. I think the current LODA process is ridiculous. Why does any person have to put together a full package of information and submit to the FAA to get transition training for a A/B aircraft. I can image that many packages are kicked back for being inadequate or incomplete. The EAA should demand that the FAA make transition training for hire legal in ALL A/B aircraft period. I would hope we would see an immediate improvement in the accident rate due to this change so we can show the FAA that they have needlessly caused many deaths and accidents through their rules. What SONEX has done is a good thing, but we can't all travel to SONEX nor does it scale to all of A/B with 33,000 aircraft.