Waypoints: A summer to remember

Sales of new piston airplanes remain flat, but interest in refurbishing the existing fleet is strong and growing. With the addition of only 1,000 or so new piston airplanes a year to the fleet, we’ll be decades in modernizing the fleet through attrition. Instead, pilots are recognizing the value in the airplanes they own, and are investing in upgrades and modernization. Quality avionics shops are booked for months, as are quality paint shops.

Some of this enthusiasm comes from a trifecta of related projects to make it simpler to install new equipment in legacy airplanes. The overarching event is the maturing of information around the FAR Part 23 rewrite, a yearslong effort by the FAA, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, AOPA, and others to simplify the process of meeting the intent of the regulations that define the certification requirements for new airplanes and upgrades to existing airplanes. Nearly three years after publishing the industry report on ways to simplify Part 23, the FAA issued a notice of proposed rulemaking at the end of March. The comment period on the NPRM closed in May, with AOPA and others submitting mostly positive comments.

The extensive rewrite would allow those creating new airplane designs to demonstrate compliance with the intent of Part 23 in less prescriptive ways. That’s great, but even then it will be years before we see truly new, less-expensive designs emerge. More important for the future of GA, the rewrite opens the door for a simplified approach to improvements to existing airplanes. Good news, but fleshing out exactly how manufacturers can take advantage of the new language will take some time. The industry is hopeful that the FAA will issue the final rule before the end of 2016.

A more immediate way to infuse safety-enhancing gear into the legacy fleet is through the Non-Required Safety Enhancing Equipment initiative. Norsee grew out of an initiative by the FAA to allow the installation of supplemental safety gear without the usual requirements for a technical standard order (TSO) and other requirements that drive up the cost of equipment and draw out the time to market. After much industry encouragement, the FAA recognized that installation of an angle of attack indicator, for example, may improve safety. Because the AOA information is supplemental to the pilot, it needn’t jump through the usual regulatory rigmarole. While simplified and less costly AOA installations were an early win, the FAA’s Norsee guidance leaves the door open to all sorts of other “supplemental” gear, including cockpit weather displays and even autopilots. Manufacturers are just beginning to understand the opportunities here.

Meanwhile, recognizing the need to move more quickly on installation of primary gear to help improve safety, AOPA President Mark Baker and I, along with AOPA Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Jim Coon, briefed FAA Administrator Michael Huerta and his staff last summer on the state of the GA fleet. We emphasized the need to more quickly infuse into certified airplanes some of the proven and lower-cost avionics available to Experimental aircraft. Huerta was receptive, and the door cracked open further to allow installation of primary non-TSOed gear into production airplanes. The result of that and other industry pushes has created quite a buzz. At Sun ’n Fun, the Experimental Aircraft Association and Dynon Avionics announced a supplemental type certificate to install an electronic attitude indicator in a Cessna 172. The solid-state display replaces the vacuum-driven, mechanical gyros in the stock attitude indicator, improving safety and reliability. The FAA isn’t relaxing Part 23 requirements, but instead is allowing manufacturers to demonstrate that their gear meets the intent of Part 23 using simpler methods.

Earlier this year I spoke with the presidents of the major avionics manufacturers about their plans to take advantage of these emerging trends around Part 23, Norsee, and non-TSOed systems. Several have projects in the works that promise to be orders of magnitude less expensive than traditional TSOed equipment. In fact, I predict this summer you’ll hear several significant announcements regarding ways for those of us flying certificated airplanes to take advantage of the safety-enhancing gear already available to those flying Experimental airplanes, including one from AOPA. Stay tuned.

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AOPA Editor in Chief Tom Haines has been covering general aviation for three decades. Watch him weekly on AOPA Live This Week.