US provisionally recognizes FATA as aircraft certification body

The Federal Air Transport Agency has been designate as the government’s plenipotentiary in the Russian-American bilateral aviation safety agreement (SCAC)

The Russian government has designated Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya) to be its executive representative in the US-Russian Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement (BASA), which was signed back in 1998. This amendment received preliminary approval of the US counterpart, which confirms that FATA is recognized as Russia’s plenipotentiary body for the certification of aircraft, designers, and manufacturers of aviation equipment. The US is represented by the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), just like before.

The amendments were introduced due to the transfer of aircraft certification functions from the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) to FATA in late 2015. Prior to that, the representative functions under BASA were shared between the IAC and FATA’s predecessor, the Federal Aviation Service. The former was responsible for aircraft certification, whereas the latter was in charge of approving maintenance organizations, licencing technical personnel and flight crews, and also for the oversight of continued airworthiness and flight operations.

Earlier, Russia sent out function transfer notifications to ICAO, the CIS countries, the European Union, as well as to China, India, Canada, Italy, Turkey, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Cuba, Switzerland, and Japan.

Italy’s ENAC recognized the Russian certification system in November 2017, paving the way for imports of Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional jets to Europe.

In the near future the IAC may also cease its functions as an aviation accident investigation body. In February 2018, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov announced an initiative to set up a supranational aviation investigation bureau for the Eurasian Economic Union member states (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Russia). The proposed document may be signed in April 2018.