How to be updated with the EASA regulation?

Quality and compliance monitoring departments from the air operators look up to be updated with the EASA regulation (European Aviation Safety Agency), which is an institution that controls the European regulations regarding aviation. The most widely used method up to now is basically a manual research, through the EASA webpage, www.easa.europa.eu/regulations.

The EASA Regulation 965/2012 is the main reference when searching for the current regulation related to air operators. From it, a series of modifications have been made and they are published so that the air operators comply with them in order to maintain the correct performance of their operations.

In order to be updated with the EASA regulation, quality and compliance monitoring personnel of air operators enter the agency website and go directly to the regulation section, where they can see a scheme with all the existing regulation packages, and under it, the page is divided vertically in sections that correspond to the regulatory packages from which regulations are generated (Air Operations, Aircrew,…). Each regulations package is divided into a series of annexes.

The regulations packages are aimed to different kinds of organisations, which means that the regulations for the air operators are not the same that those for the approved training organisations, the navigation service’s providers, the maintenance organisations, etc. although it is common to find that various packages affect the same kind of organisation.

When consulting the agency webpage to be updated with the EASA regulation, it is possible to observe that there are different kinds of regulations:

• Hard Law. Implementing regulations are the laws that EASA proposes, but that have to go through the European Parliament to be finally accepted.
• Soft Law. Acceptable means of compliance and guidance material and the Certification Specifications are the supporting material that the organisations have to comply together with the regulations. They are published directly by EASA, without having to go through the European Parliament.

In the upper part of each division related with a regulation’s package, there is a drop-down menu where all the regulations are shown (Hard Laws, implementing regulations), together with the publication date and their current status, that is, if they have been repealed, modified, etc.

Under the regulations within the sections of each regulation’s package, it is possible to find the Soft Law, divided into Acceptable Means of Compliance and Guidance Material (AMC&GM) in the drop-downs to the left, in red, and in the Certification Specifications to the right, in green.

All the regulations’ listings are organized with the most recent publications in the first positions. In all the packages, you can see the links to all the consolidations of the existing regulations.

What are the consolidations?

The consolidations are documents that combine all the applicable regulations of one of the subdivisions from the EASA regulation. The consolidations include everything that modifies the regulation. For example, when a regulation modification is published from a specific package, the modification and the affected regulation appear in different publications, but the consolidation would be just one document where they both appear. This means that the consolidation is the union of them both. In this way, it is possible to know exactly what is into force.

There are different kinds of consolidations such as:

1. Official consolidations from Implementing Rules: They are published in the Official Bulletin of the European Union, through the EUR/lex webpage. In these documents, all the requirements of Hard Laws from the regulations package they are associated with, and that are in force at that moment are included. This means that if a requirement from an Implementing Rule included in a consolidation of this kind is introduced after its publication date, it will not be considered.
2. Non-official consolidation from AMC&GM/CS: Soft Laws consolidations that are specific for any annex of each regulations package are published every certain number of publications for the annex, which is an EASA specific criterium and specific for each case.
3. Easy Access Rules: They are also non-official EASA consolidations, but in this case, they gather Hard Laws as well as Soft Laws, and the requirements that are not yet in force are considered.

It should be noted that these consolidations are not always updated, therefore it is necessary to check the documents’ publication date and the last included reviews in the consolidations because in many cases there will be regulations that are not yet included in the consolidations.  

What is the Basic Regulation?

Basic regulations are the EASA basic regulations shown in the first place in the webpage scroll. The regulations that define the functions of the European Safety Agency of EASA are published here as well as the legal frame by which EASA is created and their functions. The Basic Regulation is crucial, as its successive updates include the new functions and responsibilities of EASA.

EASA regulations for air operators

The regulations package for air operators has the “Air operations” name. Some of the most important annexes of this package are:

• Part-ARO, that include the authority’s requirements.
• Part-ORO, that include the requirements regarding the organisation, administrative subjects, management systems, etc.
• Part-CAT, that is associated with the area of commercial air transport operations.
• Part-SPA, where you can find the requirements of the specific approvals that an air operator needs.
• Part-NCC, associated with no complex non-commercial operations. For the operations to be complex considerations about the aircraft, like for example the maximum number of passengers, are considered (from a certain number they start to be considered as complex.)
• Part-NCO, associated with the non-commercial non-complex operations.
• Part-SPO, where the requirements of the specialised operations  with aircraft are published, such as agriculture, construction, photography, surveying, observation and patrol, and aerial advertisement.

The air operators that have a specific approval or that perform any specialised operation must comply with the general requirements of the SPA or SPO parts and with the specific requirements of the approvals they have or the operations that they perform, as our Applicable Requirements Identification Calculator for Air Operations (AOC) show.

To consult the web to be updated with the EASA regulation is a task that can take hours and a lot of effort by quality and compliance monitoring departments of the air operators, a fact that the software for quality control and nonconformities SICOMO, have a real-time updated EASA regulations and requirements database which avoid less efficient control systems like excel spreadsheets or other personal databases.

With this solution, the users of the application save research and consulting time of the EASA regulation, as it has all the information centralized in just one environment that also send email notifications or in-app notifications when there is an update in the regulation.

Furthermore, the SICOMO solution sends a monthly newsletter with the last modifications and updates from the EASA regulation, which makes it terribly simple to be sure that the organisation that uses the service is updated with the regulation.

If you wish to know how to guarantee the maximum efficiency with audit plans and reports templates for air operators and how to optimize the compliance monitoring management of air operators according to the EASA regulation, request a free demo.