International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) Program

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 129</CFR> <SUBJECT>International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Request for comments on proposed changes to the IASA Program. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> On September 28, 2022, the FAA published a Policy Statement in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> that described policy changes to the FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) program as well as clarification or restatement of prior policy to “enhance engagement with civil aviation authorities (CAAs) through pre- and post-IASA assessment and to promote greater transparency.” After receiving inquiries and questions about the changes described in that policy statement, the FAA is, elsewhere in this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> , suspending implementation of the September 28, 2022, Policy Statement while the agency reassesses the policy, and invites public comments on proposed changes to the FAA IASA program policy contained herein. The policy statement of March 8, 2013, remains active. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The FAA must receive comments by September 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments identified by docket number FAA-2024-2058 using any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the online instructions for sending your comments electronically. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send comments to Docket Operations, M-30; U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Room W12-140, West Building Ground Floor, Washington, DC 20590-0001. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> Take comments to Docket Operations in Room W12-140 of the West Building Ground Floor at 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20590-0001, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. • <E T="03">Fax:</E> Fax comments to Docket Operations at (202) 493-2251. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Rolandos Lazaris, Division Manager, International Program Division (AFS-50), Flight Standards Service, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20591; (202) 267-3719. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The IASA program is the means by which the FAA determines whether another country's oversight of its air carriers that (1) operate, or seek to operate, services to/from the United States using their own aircraft and crews, or (2) seek to display the code of a U.S. air carrier on any services, complies with safety standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The published IASA results of a country's placement in Category 1 or Category 2 is the notification to the U.S. traveling public as to whether a foreign air carrier's homeland civil aviation authority meets ICAO safety standards. A Category 1 rating indicates that the civil aviation authority meets ICAO safety standards for these operations, and a Category 2 rating indicates that the civil aviation authority does not meet ICAO safety standards. The IASA program was established by a document published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> in 1992. Subsequent published documents in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notified of the program's evolution. These <E T="04">Federal Register</E> documents are as follows: • August 24, 1992—Established the FAA Procedures for Examining and Monitoring Foreign Air Carriers (57 FR 38342). • September 8, 1994—Established the Public Disclosure of the Results of Foreign Civil Aviation Authority Assessments, through a three-category numbered rating system (59 FR 46332). • October 31, 1995—DOT Notice Clarification Concerning Examination of Foreign Carriers' Request for Expanded Economic Authority, clarified the Department's licensing policy regarding requests for expanded economic authority from foreign air carriers whose CAA's safety oversight capability has been assessed by the FAA as conditional (Category II) or unacceptable (Category III) (60 FR 55408). • May 25, 2000—Changes to the International Aviation Safety Assessment program removed the Category 3 rating and combined it with Category 2 (65 FR 33751). • March 8, 2013—Changes to the International Aviation Safety Assessment program removed inactive countries (countries with no air carrier operations to the United States or code-shares with U.S. air carrier for four years and no significant interaction between the country's CAA and the FAA) from the IASA Category list (78 FR 14912). Through the IASA program, the FAA seeks continuous improvement to global aviation safety. As noted in the above-referenced policy statement of September 8, 1994, initial IASA assessments found that two-thirds of the assessed CAAs were deficient in meeting their safety oversight obligations under the Convention on International Civil Aviation. The September 28, 2022, Policy Statement (87 FR 58725) (now suspended) announced certain changes to the IASA program and provided clarification to other aspects of the IASA policy. Since that publication, the FAA and DOT have received inquiries and questions that warrant reassessment of those changes and clarifications, and an opportunity for public comment before they are adopted permanently. As noted above, the FAA is suspending implementation of the September 28, 2022, Policy Statement while the agency reassesses the policy and considers public comments. Public comment is invited on the matters and issues described below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">IASA Program Policy Changes, Clarification, or Restatement</HD> The following paragraphs describe proposed policy changes, clarification, or restatement to the FAA's IASA program to enhance engagement with CAAs through pre- and post-IASA assessment and to promote greater transparency. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Changes to the Definition of the IASA Categories</HD> The FAA is proposing to modify the scope of the IASA Category definitions to align them with the types of operations that require an IASA Category rating. The March 8, 2013, IASA policy statement describes two possible IASA Categories in which the FAA places countries: ○ <E T="03">Category 1, Meets ICAO Standards:</E> The FAA has found that the country meets ICAO standards for safety oversight of civil aviation. When a country is in Category 1, its foreign air carriers may provide service to the United States with their own aircraft/crews under 14 CFR part 129 and 14 CFR 375.42 and 375.70 or may, with the DOT's Office of the Secretary (OST) and FAA approval, engage in code-sharing partnerships with U.S. air carriers where a U.S. air carrier places its code on flights operated by a foreign air carrier(s). • <E T="03">Category 2, Does Not Meet ICAO Standards:</E> The FAA has found that the country does not meet ICAO standards for safety oversight of civil aviation. In addition, the May 25, 2000, policy statement introduced the Category 2* designation for those countries not serving the U.S. at the time of their IASA assessment. The 2013 policy statement further states that “the IASA category rating applies only to services to and from the United States and to codeshare operations when the code of a U.S. air carrier is placed on a foreign carrier flight. . . . The [FAA] assessment team looks at [a foreign carrier's domestic flights or flights by that carrier between its homeland and a third country] only to the extent that they reflect on the country's oversight of operations to and from the United States and to codeshare operations where a U.S. air carrier code is placed on a flight conducted by a foreign air operator.” The FAA highlights this explanation in this document to address any mistaken perception that the IASA program evaluates the oversight of all operations of foreign air carriers of a particular country. The FAA exercises oversight authority of foreign air carriers with service to the United States through issuance and oversight of operations specifications (OpSpecs) issued under 14 CFR part 129 to foreign air carriers that operate services to/from the United States with their own aircraft and crews. This requires the FAA to engage in regular contact with the relevant foreign CAA as to various aspects of these operations. When a U.S. air carrier places its code on a foreign air carrier's flight that is conducted by the foreign carrier entirely outside the United States, part 129 OpSpecs are not required, but those code-share arrangements are subject to regular audits conducted by the FAA under the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of the Secretary (OST)/FAA Code-Share Safety Program Guidelines. In addition, as part of its standard foreign carrier licensing process, the DOT requests that the FAA determine if foreign charters requesting service to the U.S. under 14 CFR 375.42 and 375.70 are receiving ICAO-compliant safety oversight from their CAA. In some instances, these part 375 applications have resulted in the FAA extending the IASA program to countries with only part 375 operators and no part 129 operators. Foreign civil aircraft operators authorized by OST to conduct charters to/from the United States under part 375 do not hold operations specifications from the FAA, nor are they allowed to carry the code of a U.S. operator. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Remove Category 2 *</HD> The FAA proposes to remove the 2 * designation. The FAA has used the 2 * category for those countries not serving the U.S. at the time of their IASA assessment. This distinction is no lon ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━