No EASA Form 1 for Certain EU Parts?

EASA has published the comment respond document (CRD) and Opinion for its rule concerning “Installation of parts and appliances that are released without an EASA Form 1 or equivalent.”

ASA has been talking about this proposal a lot, so many of our members are already familiar with the proposal.  It would allow the design approval holder (DAH) to classify articles, and to permit certain articles to be exempted from the regulations (so that the regulator would have no production oversight over the article).  This would be performed in the context of preparation of the ICAs, as a privilege of the design approval holder.  The reason for classifying articles is to define a class of articles that do not need production approval, and that do not need EASA Form 1.

The DAH could choose to classify parts into two categories.  The categories would be distinguished based on the safety effect of the article as installed on the aircraft

• Category One would reflect the norm, under which articles are produced under production organization approval (POA) and bear an EASA Form 1. This will be the default in cases where the manufacturer does not classify articles.
• Category Two would reflect articles with a negligible safety effect. The regulators would not regulate the production of such parts.  Such articles would not require EASA Form 1 to be received by a Part 145 organization.  This would allow the DAH to de-regulate an article.

Classifying parts into category two would be a voluntary activity.  The DAH would determine the safety effect and would publish the list of category two parts in the instructions for continuing airworthiness (ICA).

The proposed language in the regulation that EASA is proposing to the European Commission for the rules would state:

“1. An organisation responsible for the manufacture of products, parts and appliances shall demonstrate its capability in accordance with the provisions of Annex I (Part 21). This demonstration of capability is not required for the parts or appliances that an organisation manufactures which, in accordance with the provisions of Annex I (Part21), are eligible for installation in a type-certified product without the need to be accompanied by an authorised release certificate (i.e. EASA Form 1).’;”

Corollary language in the annex, section 21.A.307, would explain thatit is not necessary to obtain production approval for:

“a part or appliance for which the consequences of a non-conformity with its approved design data has a negligible safety effect on the product and which is identified as such by the holder of the design approval in the instructions for continued airworthiness. In order to determine the safety effects of a non-conforming part or appliance, the design approval holder may establish in the instructions for continued airworthiness specific verification activities to be conducted by the installer of the part or appliance on the product;”

This language would provide a regulatory (“hard law”) basis for the EASA proposal.

The proposed rule still has problems.  ASA pointed out in comments that the ICA is typically not made available to distributors, and therefore it could become impossible for distributors to know the compliance obligations for articles, due to the fact that it would be impossible for distributors to know whether the articles were placed into category one or category two.  If a third party produced the parts under a claim that they were category two, then this claim would not be verifiable because the verification data would not be publicly available (thus a manufacturer could fabricate unapproved parts, erroneously call them category two, and introduce them into the system without EASA Form 1; and a distributor would have no way to verify whether the articles are category 1 or 2).  This opens to the door to introduction of unapproved parts, and undermines the systems that distributors have used to help protect air carriers from bad parts.

EASA has also discussed possibly using CS-STAN to identify articles that are considered to have ‘negligible safety effect’ and which can, therefore, be installed without an EASA Form 1.  This would be for articles that EASA feels generally have a negligible safety effect.

In comments, Rolls Royce Deutschland, the FAA, MARPA and ASA all suggested that this might be inconsistent with state duties under ICAO norms.  ASA suggested that the proposal might be inconsistent with European obligations under the Chicago Convention, Annex 8, Part II, section 2.2.1.

There is a possibility that this rule may change nothing,.  A comparable rule in the U.S., the commercial parts rule, was ill-formed and did not get used the way it was expected to be used.  So too, this new EASA rule might not be used and the industry may find itself unchanged after this rule.