Last week, ARSA submitted a letter to the FAA, EASA, Transport Canada, CASA (Australia) and CAA NZ (New Zealand) regarding mutual acceptance of a single form as an approval for return to service document. The goal is to avoid the present scenario of repair facilities that are certificated by several national aviation authorities having to put the same information on several different pieces of paper when issuing a “multiple release” for a component. This problem arises when a bilateral aviation safety agreement with maintenance implementation procedures does not exist between the countries involved (an example of this scenario is provided in the letter).

The proposed solution is common acceptance of the standard approval form that already exists (e.g., FAA 8130-3; EASA Form 1) so long as the substantive elements required by the rules of each authority are contained in the document. Realizing that existing EASA and CAA NZ rules require revision for true compatibility, we asked that, in the short-term, those authorities agree to recognize FAA, TCCA and CASA standard release certificates as equivalents to each respective version of Form 1, if issued as a multiple release document after component maintenance (or alteration) provided the essential technical recordkeeping requirements of all the national authorities was met; those elements, along with a comparison of the applicable rules, are presented in the letter.

ARSA recognized the agencies for their leadership in aviation safety and harmonization, and noted that action on their part would provide momentum for a truly universal approach to maintenance recordkeeping.

ARSA’s letter may be found here.

More from ARSA