“EASA Boosts Regulatory Framework For Innovative Air Mobility”

The Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) has made an impor­tant step in estab­lish­ing a com­pre­hen­sive reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for Inno­v­a­tive Air Mobil­i­ty (IAM), by intro­duc­ing spe­cif­ic accept­able means of com­pli­ance (AMC) and guid­ance mate­r­i­al (GM) to the require­ments for the oper­a­tion of manned ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) capa­ble air­craft (VCA), reports a press release.

Please Read

https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/domains/drones-air-mobility/drones-air-mobility-landscape/innovative-air-mobil­i­ty-hub

The release explains, “This new reg­u­la­to­ry mate­r­i­al aims to enable the safe imple­men­ta­tion of manned VCA oper­a­tions and fos­ter the accep­tance and adop­tion of these inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies by Euro­pean cit­i­zens.”

It con­tin­ues, “Its objec­tives include ensur­ing safe VCA oper­a­tions in air traf­fic man­age­ment (ATM) envi­ron­ment, sup­port­ing inno­va­tion, pro­vid­ing guid­ance to com­pe­tent author­i­ties, man­u­fac­tur­ers, and oper­a­tors, and facil­i­tat­ing the ear­ly adop­tion of IAM tech­nolo­gies.”

Adding, “The new AMC & GM are there­fore cru­cial for VCA oper­a­tors, VCA man­u­fac­tur­ers, com­pe­tent author­i­ties, flight crews and the pub­lic, facil­i­tat­ing the safe and effi­cient inte­gra­tion of VCA into the Euro­pean avi­a­tion sys­tem.”

Key Oper­a­tional Aspects Addressed

: Air Oper­a­tions (Air OPS) - Amend­ments to the AMC and GM to Reg­u­la­tion (EU) No 965/2012 and Annex II (Part-ARO), Annex III (Part-ORO), and Annex V (Part-SPA) there­to have been intro­duced, along with a new Annex IX (Part-IAM) specif­i­cal­ly for VCA oper­a­tions. The guid­ance empha­sis­es pre­flight prepa­ra­tion, avail­abil­i­ty of land­ing sites (ver­ti­ports, diver­sion loca­tions), and fuel/energy man­age­ment.

: Flight Crew Licens­ing (FCL) - AMC has been devel­oped for Arti­cle 4f of Reg­u­la­tion (EU) No 1178/2011, pro­vid­ing guid­ance on VCA type rat­ing train­ing cours­es. This includes adap­ta­tions for inno­v­a­tive air­craft designs and a broad­er approach to the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge by refer­ring to var­i­ous air­craft cat­e­gories.

: Stan­dard­ised Euro­pean Rules of the Air (SERA) - The term ‘fuel/energy’ has been intro­duced to accom­mo­date var­i­ous ener­gy sources used for air­craft propul­sion, includ­ing elec­tri­cal ener­gy stored in bat­ter­ies. Addi­tion­al­ly, few GM have been adapt­ed to ensure safe accom­mo­da­tion of VCA oper­a­tions in ATM envi­ron­ment.

The release con­cludes, “The AMC and GM to Reg­u­la­tion (EU) 2024/1111 on IAM are pub­lished with EASA Exec­u­tive Direc­tor (ED) Deci­sions 2025/010/R, 2025/011/R, and 2025/012/R, and were devel­oped under Rule­mak­ing Task (RMT).0230, Sub­task C#3.”

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.easa.europa.eu/en

(Top image: EASA)

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