Switzerland, while not a member of the EU, has joined EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency. There is no doubt, that regulation of transeuropean and transcontinental public air traffic makes sense. However the Agency has from its start up to today tried to regulate what can be regulated. The process is such, that 27 EU member states and 6 more EASA member states come together and synchronise their regulations with the goal of one single and common set of rules. A noble undertaking, which in theory should make the rules clear and understandable for all.
What happens is that there is always one of the 33 which has more complex and demanding rules then the 32 others but the process is such, that the as this are safety concerned administrators, the compromise, most of the time ends of the most restrictive common rule.
By this process, instead of having the simplest common denominator we are ending up with the sum of all 33 individual rules.
The effect of this I may highlight with an example: the manager of a flight operations department told me, that when he started his job 27 year ago, the manual which his pilots have to follow, based on the national rules of Switzerland, had 66 pages in 1972. In 1988 his Flight Operations Manual had 105 pages due to successful company expansion. With the advent of the Joint Aviation Authority, this was increased to more than 1000 pages and due to the European Aviation Safety Agency his Flight Operations Manual has now more than 2000 pages.
No human being is able to comply with such a monster.
It might be survivable for big organisations, like BAA, Air France, Lufthansa. Small and Medium Enterprises (SME)however, faced with such burdens are pushed out of business all over Europe. On top of their own national authority, whom in our case has grown more than 50% with the justification, that due to EASA there is so much more work (as demonstrated with the above example), SME's are faced with the EASA agency, whom has meanwhile grown to more than 500 staff in Cologne. There is now end in sight. The only thing which is growing nowadays are the authorities, the regulations they push out and the collateral damage associated with the costs. This is the same for the members of our European Association, the European Charter of General Aviation Support, (ECOGAS) headquartered in Aylesbury, UK.
EU has recognised that the regulations are becoming more and more a threat to the General and Business Aviation community and has issued papers in this direction as well the EU has started an de bureaucratisation initiative, which shall save 28 billion € annually for the SME's, but with no effect so far for GA and Business Aviation.
Franz Meier is the Director of Swiss Aircraft Maintenance Association
