Avionics News March 2013 - 65

A

rule that provides no metrics for compliance other than

what the local inspector considers acceptable, and threatens
to affect repair station business relationships without
permitting the repair station to have any input into the
policies, procedures, methods and instructions spawned by
the rule, is a recipe for inconsistent interpretation.

will be acceptable and what policies,
procedures, methods and instructions
will be unacceptable.
This ambiguity will leave the
review and acceptance of these
required provisions to the unfettered
discretion of the FAA inspector
assigned to the air carrier. Despite
stating the rules must be acceptable
to the FAA, the rule provides
absolutely no guidance as to what
will be acceptable or unacceptable
to the FAA, which means that until
and unless guidance is provided,
FAA inspectors will be free to
demand any policies, procedures,
methods and instructions they
choose.
This should be a danger sign
for repair stations. They will
be required to conform to the
policies, procedures, methods and
instructions when they work for the
applicable air carriers, and those
policies, procedures, methods, and
instructions also will affect the
contractual relationship between the
repair station and the customer. The
repair station has no input into the
process as it develops between the

air carrier and the FAA inspector.
This means that repair stations
will have no say whatsoever into
the development of air carrier
policies, procedures, methods and
instructions that are specifically
intended to affect the repair station’s
business relationship with the
affected air carrier.
The lack of guidance about
what will be acceptable and
not be acceptable is exactly the
sort of vague language that has
historically led to complaints
about inconsistency in regulatory
interpretation and allegations
that FAA inspectors are adding
new de facto requirements to the
regulatory structure, which were
never intended at the time of the
promulgation of the rule.
In an ironic twist, the same
law that gave rise to this contract
maintenance policy requirement
also required the FAA to convene a
regulatory consistency panel, which
would “determine the root causes
of inconsistent interpretation of
regulations by the administration’s
Flight Standards Service and

Aircraft Certification Service”
(section 313 of the law). The public
needs to look no further than this
proposed rule to identify the answer
to the congressional concern over
regulatory consistency. A rule that
provides no metrics for compliance
other than what the local inspector
considers acceptable, and threatens
to affect repair station business
relationships without permitting the
repair station to have any input into
the policies, procedures, methods
and instructions spawned by the
rule, is a recipe for inconsistent
interpretation.
It is obvious the roots of this
rule are not bad – the philosophy
behind the rule is very positive. The
problem is with the implementation
in rule language. For example,
the preamble to the rule stresses
the importance of sharing the air
carrier’s maintenance manual with
the maintenance contractor to ensure
the maintenance contractor has the
right data. This is consistent with
current law, which requires a repair
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Avionics News March 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News March 2013
