Contributor - Accidents and Regulations

Contributor - Accidents and Regulations

Gordon Gilbert

An EASA&nbsp;notice of proposed rulemaking&nbsp;(NPA) establishes minimum requirements, responsibilities, and qualifications for serving as a flight dispatcher, a position mandated for European-registered commercial aircraft operations, including most business jet charter companies. But because current requirements are vague and confusing, the proposed amendments are designed to standardize flight dispatcher training across EASA member states and to ensure a level playing field.
The NPA also contains requirements for the training of “operational control personnel,” which includes flight operations officer&nbsp;qualifications, and designates an “advanced qualification” level for flight dispatchers. Additionally, this NPA amends provisions on fuel planning and management and all-weather operations. Dispatcher rules do not apply to helicopter and non-commercial general aviation operations.
According to EASA, although both industry and member states acknowledge that operational control personnel are safety-critical, regulations do not include requirements to identify the tasks, responsibilities, and training of operational control personnel and their instructors.
“This lack of requirements has resulted in several issues,” said EASA. For example, “only a few member states have national requirements for training of operational control personnel, but the degree to which they are compliant with ICAO recommended standards varies.”
Moreover, some states restrict access to certain operational control tasks to licensed personnel only—for example,&nbsp;load control, air navigation, or meteorological tasks. However, national licenses are issued for different tasks, and the level of qualification differs between EU member states. “This leads to a total lack of harmonization and recognition of training and qualifications at the European Union level.”
Another issue being addressed by the NPA is to resolve the unclear definition of the flight dispatcher position. Recent EU legislation created a safety-critical domain for ground handling, and “flight dispatch” is included in the definition of ground-handling services. Therefore, the term “flight dispatcher” is used in both domains and&nbsp;with a different meaning, “often leading to confusion in discussions, expected tasks, and responsibilities.”
What’s more, the confusion is exacerbated “by no clear identification of flight dispatcher tasks in relation to operational control on one hand&nbsp;and the lack of additional clarification of the term ‘flight dispatch’ in ground handling.” If not resolved as is proposed,” EASA said,&nbsp;“this would have potential safety implications due to the numerous interfaces between air operations and ground handling procedures.”
The agency&nbsp;conceded that harmonized training for operational control personnel is difficult to assess because the ultimate responsibility for operational control of a flight remains solely with the pilot-in-command. “Consequently, when a reported event indicates, for example, fuel starvation&nbsp;as the main cause of an&nbsp;incident, this cause is rarely linked unequivocally to the inadequate training of the flight dispatcher, nor is that inadequate training considered a systemic contributing cause,” said EASA. “At the same time, many of the serious incidents and accidents caused by fuel starvation can be easily used to justify that the lack of proper training of operational control personnel was a contributing factor to those events.”
With these issues at the forefront, the specific objectives of this proposal are to ensure that tasks and responsibilities of operational control personnel are clearly identified; address the need for EU training requirements for operational control personnel and their instructors; clarify the confusion created by the term "flight dispatcher" used with a different meaning in flight operations and ground-handling operations; and improve the clarity of some of the provisions on fuel planning and management.
Comments on the NPA are due July 24. EASA is expected to allow affected stakeholders “sufficient time” to implement the proposed amendments.

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