Brussels, 07/01/2008 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission plans to complement European civil aviation legislation to better suit it to the complexity of the aircraft. A communication entitled “An Agenda for Sustainable Future in General and Business Aviation” is due to be adopted on Friday 11 January, to take account in future of the specific nature of general and business aviation (leisure flying, aerial work, pilot training, private aircraft, etc.) - a rapidly developing sector and one which, hitherto, has not been covered by European legislation on civil aviation.
The European Commission, thus, decided to act so that specially adapted existing safety, security, environmental and air traffic management standards can be applied, including to the smallest planes (those with no engines, or with turbines, which often have no specific navigation equipment compulsory in airliners) to general aviation. This will work at several levels, including, among other things, the creation of a general and business aviation database (current statistics do not include aircraft with a maximum take-off mass (MTOM) of less than 2,250kg). The Commission is also likely to encourage new technologies and take general aviation into consideration when drawing up the Community external aviation policy. The future legislation will also ensure that the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity are respected, including with regard to legislation on local flights (the Commission has undertaken to draw up rules that are tailored to the complexity of aviation, both from the maintenance point of view and the use made of the aircraft and crew licences) and to insurance requirements. With regard to this last point, the Commission will present a report to the European Parliament and Council on how the regulation on insurance in the aviation sector is working.
The interests of small operators will not be forgotten either in the strategies designed to improve existing air traffic and airport infrastructure capacities, notably in the action plan to enhance capacity, efficiency and airport security in Europe (see EUROPE 9350). For example, to respond to the needs of general and business aviation, it may be possible to use alternative runways. Other methods, such as the development and implementation of new technologies (automatic systems of weather monitoring, unmanned traffic services and the use of satellite navigation systems in air traffic control) could increase airport capacity. The Commission also draws attention to the fact that programmes like SESAR should allow better allocation of air space, while taking into account that most general and business aviation craft do not have the navigation equipment of airliners (according to 2005 Commission estimates, of 15 million flights carried out by private aviation, fewer than one million were subject to air traffic control. Thus, the new programme implementing rules updating air traffic control (notably the SESAR project) should permit small aircraft to fly without danger in a heavily crowded airspace. The Commission estimates that air traffic will double within the next 20 years and that the general and business aviation sector alone has grown almost twice as quickly since 2003 as the other traffic (in 2006, it accounted for around 9% of all movement recorded by Eurocontrol).
Consideration will also have to be given to environmental sustainability, both in terms of noise issues (although the Commission has no intention of legislating at Community level on noise levels in small local aerodromes, leaving this matter up to local authorities) and emissions into the atmosphere (the Commission might review the scope of the future directive, bringing air activities into the Community greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme).
The communication, due to be adopted on Friday, covers all civil aviation, apart from commercial air transport. It also pertains to on-demand, remunerated, civil air transport operations, including specialised aerial works, aerial training, recreational flying, on-demand air taxi operations and company/individual owned aircraft operated for business/profession purposes. (A.By.)