EASA and ANAC agree cooperation on e‑VTOL certification

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) and the Nation­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Agency of Brazil (ANAC Brazil) have signed a Let­ter of Intent (LOI) to fur­ther coop­er­ate on e‑VTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

The let­ter was signed by the ANAC Brazil Act­ing Pres­i­dent-Direc­tor, Tia­go Pereira and Luc Tyt­gat, EASA Strat­e­gy and Safe­ty Man­age­ment Direc­tor last week dur­ing the EASA-FAA Safe­ty Con­fer­ence in Cologne.

It under­lines the inten­tion of both Author­i­ties to work close­ly togeth­er on build­ing the path towards the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of e‑VTOL by shar­ing expe­ri­ence and work­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Bilat­er­al Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agree­ment between the Euro­pean Union and the Gov­ern­ment of the Fed­er­a­tive Repub­lic of Brazil on civ­il avi­a­tion safe­ty cov­ers the val­i­da­tion of e‑VTOLs.

EASA and ANAC have a com­mon inter­est to pro­mote avi­a­tion safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal qual­i­ty, as well as tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment on avi­a­tion ser­vices. Fur­ther­more, they have a com­mon inter­est in the safe oper­a­tion of civ­il air­craft, includ­ing eVTOL.

The role of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ties to coor­di­nate a safe and har­monised intro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies in the civ­il avi­a­tion sys­tem has increased. The par­ties there­fore have a com­mon desire to enhance coop­er­a­tion and increase effi­cien­cy in mat­ters relat­ing to civ­il avi­a­tion safe­ty on the basis of equal­i­ty, reci­procity and mutu­al ben­e­fit, with­in the lim­i­ta­tions of the applic­a­ble leg­is­la­tion and the bud­get of each author­i­ty.

They intend to estab­lish recur­rent com­mu­ni­ca­tion at tech­ni­cal lev­el with the pur­pose of shar­ing expe­ri­ences and lever­age knowl­edge relat­ed to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of EVTOL, and to seek joint par­tic­i­pa­tion and align­ment in inter­na­tion­al tech­ni­cal groups involved with the devel­op­ment of stan­dards.

They will pur­sue the devel­op­ment or adop­tion of com­mon or aligned, tech­ni­cal stan­dards applic­a­ble to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of e‑VTOL vehi­cles and pro­mote the ben­e­fits of con­cur­rent val­i­da­tions to the indus­try, as a means to facil­i­tate align­ment of tech­ni­cal stan­dards and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of the civ­il avi­a­tion sys­tems.

They will also coor­di­nate the ear­ly involve­ment in tech­ni­cal con­ver­sa­tions relat­ed to the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of new eVTOL prod­ucts where val­i­da­tion is intend­ed and will coop­er­ate on the har­mon­i­sa­tion of poli­cies, pro­ce­dures and prac­tices relat­ed to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of eVTOL.

Ear­li­er last week, EASA released a report head­ed, ‘Guide­lines to Estab­lish the Noise Lev­els of Drones Below 600kg’. The aim is to har­monise pro­ce­dures to mea­sure the noise of drones used in the low and medi­um-risk oper­a­tions of the ‘spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry’.

EASA Releas­es New Report: “Guide­lines to Estab­lish the Noise Lev­els of Drones Below 600kg”