Foreign Air Operator Certificates Issued by a Regional Safety Oversight Organization

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Aviation Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>14 CFR Part 129</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No.: FAA-2024-0176; Amdt. No. 129-55]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2120-AL93</RIN> <SUBJECT>Foreign Air Operator Certificates Issued by a Regional Safety Oversight Organization</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This amendment will allow the FAA to review and, if acceptable to the Administrator, recognize as valid air operator certificates issued by a Regional Safety Oversight Organization to foreign air carriers when the State of the Operator is a member of that Regional Safety Oversight Organization, for purposes of evaluating foreign applicants for operating specifications. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective January 16, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> For information on where to obtain copies of rulemaking documents and other information related to this final rule, see “Additional Information” in the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Tim Shaver, International Program Division/International Operations Branch, Federal Aviation Administration, 800 Independence Avenue SW, Washington, DC, 20591; telephone (202) 267-1704; email <E T="03">tim.shaver@faa.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Authority for This Rulemaking</HD> The FAA's authority to issue rules on aviation safety is found in title 49 of the United States Code. Subtitle I, section 106, describes the authority of the FAA Administrator. Subtitle VII, Aviation Programs, describes in more detail the scope of the FAA's authority. This rulemaking is issued under the authority described in subtitle VII, part A, subpart III, section 44701(a)(5). Under that section, the FAA is charged with promoting safe flight of civil aircraft in air commerce by prescribing regulations and minimum standards for practices, methods, and procedures the Administrator finds necessary to ensure safety in air commerce. This regulation is within the scope of that authority. Amending the regulations for applications for operations specifications under part 129 submitted by foreign air carriers or foreign persons, and the related standards for denial of such an application for operations specifications authorizations, improves the FAA's ability to manage these authorizations. These operations specifications are issued to foreign air carriers operating within the United States and to foreign air carriers or foreign persons conducting operations of U.S.-registered aircraft solely outside the United States. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Executive Summary</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Purpose of the Regulatory Action</HD> Prior to this action, FAA regulations required that foreign applicants for operations specifications must hold a valid air operator certificate (AOC) issued by the State of the Operator. See 14 CFR 129.7(c)(5). Requiring the operator to hold an AOC issued by the State of the Operator is consistent with the standard in Annex 6, Volume 1 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, which directs that an operator shall not engage in commercial transport operations unless in possession of a valid AOC issued by the State of the Operator. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Annex 6, Volume 1, 4.2.1.1. </FTNT> Some International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Contracting States have joined together to form Regional Safety Oversight Organizations (RSOO). These organizations may provide a uniform regulatory structure for safety oversight and provide technical assistance and the execution of safety oversight functions for their member States. RSOOs have been established in many parts of the world. These organizations may be formed based on a variety of differing arrangements among member States. The institutional structures of these organizations range from highly formalized intergovernmental organizations established on the basis of formal legal agreements to less formalized organizations established under the ICAO Cooperative Development of Operational Safety and Continuing Airworthiness Program. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Information for ICAO Cooperative Development of Operational Safety and Continuing Airworthiness Program (COSCAP) is contained in the ICAO Safety Oversight Manual, Part B, The Establishment and Management of a Regional Safety Oversight Organization, Doc. 9734, 2011. </FTNT> As stated in ICAO guidance, “under the Chicago Convention, only the State has responsibility for safety oversight, and this responsibility may not be transferred.”  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> The guidance further states that, although the State may delegate specific safety oversight tasks and functions to an RSOO, such as inspections for the certification of an operator, the State must still retain the minimum capability required to carry out its responsibilities under the Chicago Convention. States must always be able to properly and effectively monitor the safety oversight functions delegated to the RSOO. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>   <E T="03">Safety Oversight Manual, Part B, The Establishment and Management of a Regional Safety Oversight Organization,</E> Doc. 9734, 2011. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Id. at 2.1.8. </FTNT> States participating in RSOOs may delegate or transfer various functions or tasks to these organizations as stipulated in the RSOO's formation documentation. As provided in ICAO guidance, one of the functions member States may delegate or transfer to a highly formalized and more fully resourced RSOO is the issuance of AOCs for the State of the Operator. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  See id. at 4.1.10, which indicates that issuance of certificates may be delegated but states that “the day-to-day surveillance of service providers remains the responsibility of the civil aviation authority (CAA) of member States.” In addition, see Sections IV.D, IV.F., and V.C. for discussion of the FAA's intent to file a difference as the standard under the Chicago Convention directs issuance of an AOC by the State of the Operator. </FTNT> In those instances where an AOC is issued by an RSOO rather than the member State, this regulation change now allows the FAA to review supporting documentation for applications for foreign air carrier operation specifications and, if acceptable to the Administrator, recognize as valid ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> ensure that it conforms to ICAO standards) AOCs issued by an RSOO to foreign air carriers if the State of the Operator is a member State of that RSOO. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Changes Made in This Final Rule</HD> This rule amends the regulations for applications by foreign air carriers and foreign persons for operations specifications under 14 CFR part 129 and amends regulations for the denial of applications for operations specifications. This rule amends three sections in subpart A of part 129: § 129.1, Applicability and definitions; § 129.7, Application, issuance, or denial of operations specifications; and § 129.9, Contents of operations specifications. Based on the comments received in response to the notice of proposed rulemaking, the FAA has revised the rule language to clarify the requirements and remove any ambiguity regarding the intent of the amendments. See section III.C. of this preamble. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Summary of the NPRM</HD> On May 22, 2024, the FAA published the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) titled “Foreign Air Operator Certificates issued by a Regional Safety Oversight Organization” (89 FR 44935). The FAA also posted draft guidance material for the proposal, “FAA Order 8900.1, Volume 12, Chapter 2, Section 2,” for comment in the NPRM docket. The NPRM proposed to amend the regulations for applications by foreign air carriers and foreign persons for operations specifications under 14 CFR part 129 and the regulations for the denial of applications for operations specifications. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. General Overview of Comments</HD> The FAA received four comments. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> The agency received comments from one individual and three associations representing industry and labor constituencies. One of the associations supported the rule. Two of the associations opposed the rule, as discussed more fully in section IV. The FAA received comments on the proposal that addressed: support for the rule change; International Aviation Safety Assessments (IASA) for RSOOs; the number of IASAs needed; legal basis concerns; validation of Safety Management Systems (SMS) in IASAs for RSOO member States; and safety concerns. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  One comment concerning Boeing employment practices was outside the scope of this rulemaking. </FTNT> In addition, on September 17, 2024, after the comment period closed, representatives of the Department of Transportation, Department of State, Department of Commerce, and Federal Aviation Administration met with representatives from Directorate-General Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE), European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), and European Union (EU) Member States for a special meeting of the Joint Committee established by the U.S.—EU Air Transport Agreement. During the meeting, DG MOVE raised concerns with this rulemaking effort. A summary of the meeting has been posted to the docket for this rulemaking. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Differences Between the NPRM and the Final Rule</HD> In the NPRM, the FAA proposed to establish new definitions in 14 CFR 129.1 for “Regional Safety Oversight Organization” and “ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 76k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━