EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency, organised two seminars at the end of April to explain the background to the new draft rules on operations, licensing and air traffic systems. The Agency intends to publish these rules in the next few weeks. It wanted to inform the public about the nature of the documents, as they represent a big change in the way aviation rules have been structured.

In 2006, European express carriers lobbied for more flexible night Flight Time Limitations (FTL) to be part of the future EU-OPS Regulation. Now, DHL’s Belgian branch ‘EAT’ applied for a derogation allowing it to exceed the 10h30–11h45 limit for night flight duties – a limit that will become mandatory all over Europe in July 2008. This derogation request could have become an example for ‘best practices’. Regrettably, this is not the case, placing the Belgian Civil Aviation Authority in a difficult situation.

This month, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) assumes its new mandate for Air Operations and Flight Crew Licensing. One of their new tasks is the drafting of “Implementing Rules” for OPS and FCL to replace JAR-FCL and EU-OPS. This is not an easy task.