This month, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) assumes its new mandate for Air Operations and Flight Crew Licensing. One of their new tasks is the drafting of "Implementing Rules" for OPS and FCL to replace JAR-FCL and EU-OPS. This is not an easy task.

The volume of work is tremendous and changing rule sets is difficult. There must be a smooth transition, confidence in the new legislation and a safe system. ECA, the wider industry and EASA itself have a tough job to make sure that we get it right, together.

ECA joined forces with the Association of European Airlines (AEA) and the Aerospace and Defence Industries' Association of Europe (ASD) to highlight our key requirements for the future IRs to EASA.

Together with these two partners we have strongly recommended to base the IRs on EU-OPS-1 / JAR-OPS and JAR-FCL. Technical changes should be limited and prudence is advised in the use of AMCs/guidance material. The structure of the new IRs must also serve the end user.

The three organisations see no added value to a completely new structure, as intended by EASA. This would confuse the safety professionals who apply the rules.

Finally, EU-OPS-1 is already EU law. There is therefore is no rush to propose new IRs in this area. Taking more time to prepare the OPS IRs will help the Agency to come up with a well thought-through legislative proposal that stakeholders will be able to support.