80 SA Flyer Magazine
WORDS:
CHRIS
MARTINUS
Strong views are regularly
expressed about whether
it is better for a private
pilot to own an NTCA
(non-type-certied aircraft)
or a TCA (type-certied
aircraft). The discussions
are often emotional and
based on conjecture and
misunderstandings.
L
ET’S take a look at the regulation of
both categories and how it affects
private aircraft owners.
CERTIFICATION
With the advent of aviation, the
certication of aircraft designs came about
as a means to ensure acceptable levels
of safety for passengers of commercial
aircraft. This resulted in a plethora of
regulatory standards being developed
by government agencies. Most of these
standards were also applied to smaller
aircraft used for private, non-commercial
purposes, simply because it was easy to
use broad regulatory strokes.
In 1944, the world entered into the
Chicago Convention and ICAO was
launched to provide for international
harmonisation of standards which would
form the basis for participating countries to
be able to trust and accept the certication
and licensing imposed by other countries.
This dramatically simplied international
civil aviation and it has since underpinned
the success of civil aviation being by far
the most important form of international
transport.
ICAO is a small United Nations agency,
headquartered in Montreal, with about 900
employees, about 300 of whom work in
regional ofces around the world. The ICAO
Council comprises the 191 member states
that have contracted into the Convention.
The Standards and Recommended
Practices (SARPs) developed by ICAO
are set out in Annexes, which change
gradually over the years. The regulations
that are promulgated by member states are
required to give effect to these standards.
The Annexes are fairly broad and allow for
exibility within national regulations. Just
as a random example, Annex 8, which
prescribes airworthiness standards for
certied (ICAO uses the term “certicated”)
aircraft species that for propellers:
“The propeller vibration stresses shall
be determined and shall not exceed values
that have been found safe for operation
within the operating limitations established
for the aeroplane.”
The standards don’t prescribe what the
values are, or much of what the operating
limitations would be. That is up to the
AOPA BRIEFING AIRCRAFT OWNERS & PILOTS ASSOCIATION – SOUTH AFRICA
NTCA, CERTIFICATION,
STANDARDS &
PRIVATISATION
The ICAO Signing Ceremony in 1944.
81 SA Flyer Magazine
national regulators to thrash out among
themselves.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
Since the United States leads civil
aviation in sheer volume and economic
power, it’s not surprising that the FAA’s
regulations and technical standards have
formed the basis of all other countries’
regulatory structure.
Other countries’ national aviation
authorities don’t adopt lesser standards,
since that would preclude their aircraft
from entering the USA or being marketed
there, and this has led to other countries
attempting to be ‘better’ than the USA
by adopting stricter and more onerous
regulations. These stricter regulations have
largely hamstrung the aviation industry in
those countries, thus entrenching the USA’s
dominance even further.
The civil aviation industry in the USA
exerts considerable inuence over the
FAA’s regulatory process, and aircraft and
related equipment manufacturers in the
USA use that inuence, not necessarily in
the interests of safety, but rather to further
their own economic interests by excluding
foreign competitors from gaining a foothold
in their markets.
Even liability insurance, a major
component of aircraft manufacturing costs
and the product liability lawsuits, was
passed onto the rest of the world by the
USA.
When it comes to extracting money
from the public in commercial aviation,
the airline passenger is at the bottom
of the food chain. Whatever the costs
of certication, regulation, operations,
maintenance and capital costs, the money
ultimately comes from the pocket of the
passenger.
General aviation is different. GA
aircraft and operations are, by denition,
non-commercial and no revenue can be
generated from the carriage of passengers
or cargo. All costs in GA operations must
come from the pocket of the aircraft owner/
operator or the pilot. Training and corporate
operations also fall within the denition of
GA, where the use of an aircraft is merely
incidental to the main business of training
schools and businesses, notwithstanding
that the pilot may be an instructor or
commercial pilot who ies for reward.
Our SACAA is an example of the
skewed revenues from commercial
passengers and GA. Over 75% of SACAA’s
income is directly derived from “passenger
safety charges”, a levy on every passenger
ticket, which is collected on their behalf by
the airlines or other commercial operators
and paid over to SACAA. By contrast, the
GA aircraft owner and/or pilot who uses his
aircraft purely for recreational, business
or training purposes foots the entire bill of
operating an aircraft, in addition to having
to pay SACAA user charges.
Very few, if any, concessions are
made to ease the burden on these
private aviators who must comply with
regulations that were primarily designed for
international commercial operations. The
decline in production of certied GA aircraft
is therefore unsurprising. However, the
past few years has seen a rise in popularity
of NTCAs. The regulatory environment in
which they exist falls completely outside
ICAO’s standards, so, from ICAO’s point
of view, NTCA don’t exist at all. This has
disadvantages. The lower cost of aircraft
manufacture free of certication is offset by
the difculties of cross-border operations,
which can only be done with the indulgence
of other countries that may not always grant
special permits or exemptions.
Training organisations also run into
difculties. For example, a private pilot
licence is an internationally-recognised
document and well-dened in the ICAO
SARPS. Annex 1 prescribes pilot training
standards in some detail, one of which is
that the freshly-minted PPL must be issued
with at least one aircraft type rating. In
the context of Annex 1, that presumes a
certied aircraft type, but the regulatory
authority is allowed some latitude.
The problem arises not from ICAO, but
from the interpretation of the SARPS by
other contracting states that may see them
in stricter, narrower terms. After all, was the
student who ew all his prescribed hours in
an NTCA in compliance when an NTCA is
not recognised within the denitions of the
SARPS?
BACK TO STANDARDS
The FAA conceptualised the light
sport aircraft, or LSA, in conjunction with
stakeholders. The idea was that an aircraft
with restricted performance which carries
only two people might be ideal for older
pilots who wish to continue pursuing their
passion for ight, despite no longer being
able to qualify for a stringent medical.
Instead of having to comply with FAA CFR
Part 23 (the US regulations which cover
smaller aircraft), the FAA agreed that these
aircraft be manufactured to standards
determined by the American Society for
Testing and Materials (ASTM) International.
The ASTM International became
an international standards organisation
in 2001. It creates consensual industry
standards for a range of products, materials
and services from more than 140 countries.
The LSA was eagerly accepted by
recreational pilots, though not necessarily
by the older ones for whom it was intended.
Although the LSA didn’t quite achieve
the expected popularity, and the FAA
experienced some difculties exercising
oversight of compliance with standards
that were not their own, the concept was
successful.
The ASTM standardisation of LSA
was embraced by ICAO back in 2012. The
AOPA BRIEFING AIRCRAFT OWNERS & PILOTS ASSOCIATION – SOUTH AFRICA COLUMNS
The FAA conceptualised Light Sport Aircraft.
82 SA Flyer Magazine
regulations based on ASTM standards are
not in conict with ICAO’s basic standards,
provided ASTM stays within ICAO’s broad
framework.
Annex 6 Part II states that: “As some
international general aviation operations
(typically under 5,700 kg) would be
performed by crews less experienced and
less skilled, with less reliable equipment,
to less rigorous standards and with greater
freedom of action than in commercial air
transport operations, it was, therefore,
accepted that the passenger in international
general aviation aircraft would not
necessarily enjoy the same level of safety
as the fare-paying passenger in commercial
air transport. However, it was recognized
that in ensuring an acceptable degree of
safety for third parties, an acceptable level
of safety for ight crews and passengers
would be achieved.”
However, aside from LSAs, other
‘experimental’ aircraft or NTCAs have
been mired in often-conicting and volatile
regulations, often created by special
interests and sometimes in dubious
circumstances. This has made today’s
NTCA as expensive to own and operate as
a TCA aircraft of a couple of decades ago.
Up against cheaper, ageing TCAs,
increasingly regulated NTCAs are
threatened by a similar oblivion to that
of the kit-car beach buggies and AC
Cobra replicas that proliferated in the
1960s. The kit-car industry, like that of
the NTCA, was originally intended for the
homebuilder who needed some bits and
pieces for his backyard project. However,
by abusing regulations that were designed
to accommodate enthusiast builders rather
than commercial manufacturers, kit-cars
and kit-planes began to be produced by
factories. This became the formula for their
demise.
The authorities responded by tightening
up NTCA regulations to the detriment of
the die-hard homebuilders. Since such
regulations placed greater expenses upon
owners, manufacturers and assemblers of
NTCA, various industry bodies have been
pushing for more restrictive regulations on
TCA in order to protect the NTCA industry.
From AOPA’s point of view, it has been
perplexing to witness increasingly restrictive
regulation of both TCA and NTCA.
A bone of contention was the
establishment of RAASA, a company
with no members which receives millions
in SACAA funding and is exclusively
empowered by SACAA to extract user
fees from the NTCA community, without
any accountability to those it purportedly
serves. This reached a peak many
months ago when AOPA obtained a public
document which showed that the majority
of RAASA directors were SACAA senior
executives who were not allowed by law to
hold such posts, as well as former ofcials.
Bearing in mind that the RAASA
directors are the sole beneciaries of
RAASA income and SACAA funding, AOPA
raised some alarm bells which elicited
savage responses from SACAA executives
and their fellow travellers.
PRIVATISATION
The idea of privatisation of state
functions seems appealing to many. Private
enterprise could be a viable alternative to
government failure, but in this post-Gupta
era, it’s feared that so-called privatisation
might result in looting of public funds on
a massive scale. The collapse of many of
our parastatals that colluded with many
previously reputable companies serves up
daily examples in the press.
It’s a matter of concern that, over
the past few years, the level of service
at the SACAA has degraded to the point
where it strains our credibility that the long
delays in the processing and issuing of
documentation is due to incompetence and/
or mismanagement – it almost appears
intentional.
Simultaneously, the justication for the
establishment of RAASA has been that they
provide “good service”, which emphasised
the question of why SACAA cannot provide
similarly good service, since they have a
vast income and massive stafng.
A possible answer comes from an
unexpected source. Karl Cloete, the deputy
general secretary of trade union NUMSA,
commented to Minister Pravin Gordhan,
who has the unenviable task of trying to turn
around our state-owned enterprises (SOEs)
that have been hollowed out by “rampant
corruption”, that the idea of rescuing the
SOEs by placing them in private hands
raises the question: “Were they purposefully
run down to make a case for privatisation?”
Cloete says that he wouldn’t be surprised
to see politically-connected empowerment
players waiting to take advantage. “We
need a complete investigation to nd out
what went wrong,” he says. “We need a
summit on SOEs so they can serve the
people; not only a tiny elite.” Perhaps he
makes a valid point that is applicable here.
ASTM TO THE RESCUE?
There are many essential functions
which are best performed by an impartial
state entity rather than private enterprise.
This is exemplied by the strenuous
efforts by AOPA in the USA to block the
privatisation of ATC, which GA advocates
believe would destroy GA by placing an
essential public service in the hands of
commercial interests – much like the “self-
funding” model behind SACAA, ATNS and
ACSA has contributed to the decline of GA
in South Africa.
Efforts by AOPA, EAA, NBAA, GAMA
and other international stakeholders,
to move for all light aircraft engaged in
non-commercial operations to fall under
one set of clear international standards is
bearing fruit. ASTM International’s success
in developing LSA standards inspired the
establishment of their F44 Committee,
whose mission is to develop GA aircraft
standards that can be adopted by aviation
regulatory bodies and used by international
stakeholders.
Committee F44 member Joost List
says:
“The effectiveness and acceptance
of ASTM consensus standards in the
light sport aircraft segment offer a proven
success model for upcoming standards
development activities for general aviation.
Many F44 members also participate in
Committee F37 (for LSAs) so there are
synergies that will be greatly advantageous
in helping pursue our goals. Further,
ASTM’s ability to bring international
stakeholders together in an open process
and provide an infrastructure for swift
collaboration makes it an ideal forum for the
development of new standards for general
aviation aircraft.”
This creates hope that GA may survive
its downward slide, which has been caused
by regulators and collusion with the industry
itself. The hodgepodge of differing and
oft-changing regulations for similar aircraft
which are used for private purposes may
come to an end and we can look forward to
unied standards for everything from very
light recreational aircraft to larger business
aircraft.
At the very least, it will create a
regulatory environment that is more open
and consistent.
AOPA BRIEFING AIRCRAFT OWNERS & PILOTS ASSOCIATION – SOUTH AFRICA
j
