The General Aviation Safety Campaign (GASC) through its Focus Group and Safety Initiative Team has identified a number of items affecting GA safety. Eight (8) of these items have been prioritized and selected as the subject of individual Working Groups. The Terms Of Reference (TOR) for these Working Groups have been defined, COPA and TCCA have canvassed their areas of activity and collected names of individuals interested in collaborating to one or more WG, according to their personal interests and experience. We are in the process of initiating the Kick-Off for these WG’s where the TOR’s are sufficiently advanced to support fruitful discussion. The primary purpose of these WG is to provide a forum for the industry to entertain a meaningful dialogue with TCCA, and to express to TCCA their perspective on the regulation and other aspects affecting GA and the issues and concerns these regulations generate. The WG’s are composed of industry and TCCA representatives. An industry representative whenever possible will lead these WG’s. These WG do not intend to provide TCCA with a vehicle to further impress regulations on the industry, although inputs on the TCCA perspective will be welcome.

The first WG Kick-Off was the Maintenance Working Group. The GASC team generally considers that this WG is of a very high priority and it focused on launching this one first. From a personal perspective, this WG is also my top priority. The current maintenance regulations have been generated too many years ago and have not really undergone significant review since. I believe these regulations do not consider or allow for the new and superior technology that is now entering the field of GA, some aspects of the regulations are inadequate when applied to new materials and equipment, the application of regulations is not standardized across the country, even within regions where individual inspectors interpret regulations as they see fit. This WG intends on addressing these and other issues.

The Terms Of Reference of the Maintenance WG are on the COPA website at the link https://oldcopa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Terms-of-Reference-Maintenance.pdf. The TOR is still labelled as ‘’Draft’’ as it represents the efforts from the GASC team at this point and is intended to present a starting point to the members of the WG. Note the last page of the TOR shows the relationship between WG’s and the GASC. The WG members will review, discuss, adapt, and improve on the TOR as work progresses. If you have any comments/suggestions/ideas relevant to the Maintenance WG, please send us an email.

The TOR for all WG’s will follow the same format. The list of WG’s at this time includes: Maintenance, AOA indicators, Voluntary Reporting, Single Pilot Resource Management, Stabilized Approach and Landing, Safety Equipment, Flight Risk Assessment Tool, and Pilot Decision Making.

These first four WG Kick-Off’s (Maintenance, Single Pilot Resource, Safety Equipment, and Pilot Decision Making) were done this week and their respective TOR will eventually become available on our website.

As the other WG’s go through their Kick-Off process, we will be making their TOR available on the COPA website. We heartily encourage all members to review all these TOR’s (each one is less than 10 pages) and to offer their comments or suggestions. COPA would also appreciate that all our members share this information with all aviators out there, COPA members or not. This is about general aviation and we will all benefit from these initiatives. COPA wants to hear from all aviators out there. Email your feedback to operations@oldcopa.org Ensure that you clearly identify which WG your email addresses.