Safety

Best practices and compliance

EBAA promotes the use of best practices and compliance, using industry standards. We also support individual approaches to reduce risk and implement initiatives to improve safety.

Aviation regulation provides a baseline for aviation safety and needs to remain proportionate to achieve the desired outcome. Regulation covering commercial operations is mainly tailored around scheduled traffic operating large fleets of similar aircraft types from a hub to normally well-equipped airports and back.

From a regulatory and safety perspective, this creates undesired side effects: overcomplications could potentially affect safety for smaller operators providing on-demand operations to and from secondary airports with irregular intervals, and small multi-aircraft fleets.

EASA Basic Regulation

Regulations covering commercial operations are mostly written for scheduled airline operations. Most commercial, on-demand Business Aviation operates under the same regulation as scheduled airline traffic, large fleets of similar aircraft types, and operations beginning at a hub or an operational base to normally well-equipped airports and back.

By properly defining Business Aviation when it comes to aviation regulation, the temptation to operate on the border between commercial and general aviation would be tempered, thus addressing potential safety concerns.

Recognition of industry standards

The Business Aviation community’s commitment to keeping a continued focus on safety includes also the implementation of the two International Business Aviation Council (IBAC) Safety Standards:

• International Standard for Business Aircraft Operations (IS-BAO)
• International Standard for Business Aviation Handlers (IS-BAH)

Both are a framework for making safety a part of the entire operational culture. They are Business Aviation industry codes-of practice recognized for meeting the ICAO Safety Management System (SMS) requirements. IS-BAO is also recognised by CEN, the European Committee for Standardization as an industry standard for business aircraft operations.

The Business Aviation community is working, in partnership with EASA, for both standards to become the accepted default standard for Business aviation safety compliance in Europe.

Flight time limitation requirements for air taxi and single-pilot operations

Business Aviation’s on-demand, unscheduled operations are still subject to an flight time limitation (FTL) rule defined in accordance to scheduled airline operations constraints.

Business Aviation calls for a full set of FTL rules defined in accordance with the sector’s realities and specificities.