Aviation Groups, Skydivers Oppose Part Of Reauthorization Bill

A contentious section of the latest version of the FAA Reauthorization bill has survived the Senate markup and seven organizations have written Congress urging it be scrapped at the conference committee stage. The Air Tour and Sport Parachuting Safety Act would require sightseeing businesses, including heritage flight operations at aviation museums, to operate under Part 135. They now operate under Part 91 through letters of authorization. It also requires recurrent training on terrain avoidance and weight and balance calculations and the installation of terrain warning devices. The letter says most of the small businesses engaged in those types of operations will not be able to afford the measures.

For skydiving operations it will require the FAA to form a rulemaking committee to write regulations that will require operators to overhaul engines and time-limited components strictly according to manufacturers' recommended TBOs. It also would require recurrent training on weight and balance and on preflight inspections, emergency and recovery procedures and parachutist egress procedures for each type of aircraft flown.

The USPA is urging its members to contact their elected representatives to get the language removed. The USPA says the members should express "our deep concerns that the proposed requirements are not scalable and do not support a data-driven approach to enhancing safety for these segments of aviation."

The contentious bill was added to the House reauthorization bill by Hawaiian Democratic congresswoman Jill Tokuda in response to a jump plane crash that killed 11 and also to a spate of air tour accidents in 2019 and 2020. It was cut from the House version of the bill but made it into the Senate version and an effort to have it removed at the Senate committee stage failed.