After nearly five years of debate, Europe’s Joint Aviation Authorities have agreed to adopt a new Extended Range Twin Operations (ETOPS) rule that allows business aircraft to continue flying direct routes across the North Atlantic. Reacting immediately to the November 21 agreement, GAMA (General Aviation Manufacturers Association) president Ed Bolen said: “This is a victory for safety and common sense.”

However, the US National Air Transportation Association remains wary of the new requirements. A spokesman said: “While NATA views this newly-approved ETOPS standard as preferable to the alternative, a 120-minute limitation, the Association remains unconvinced that a regulation of this type is even necessary for on-demand air charter operations.”

In 1996, the JAA proposed an ETOPS rule that would have prevented twin-engine aircraft used in commercial operations from flying more than 120 minutes from a suitable airfield. Had that rule been adopted as proposed, business aircraft would no longer have been allowed to fly direct routes across the Atlantic. Instead, they would have been forced to fly longer, more circuitous routes that would have often necessitated an additional landing and take-off.

“The rule that was originally proposed by the JAA was not justified by safety data and, in fact, would have degraded the margin of safety,” said Bolen. “For well over three decades, twin-engine business jets have been flying direct routes across the North Atlantic without ever experiencing the kind of accident the proposed JAA rule sought to prevent.

“To impose a rule that required additional take-offs and landings in parts of the world where weather and terrain conditions are often less than ideal, made no sense.”

Chris Mason at the UK’s CAA press office told EBAN: “It’s a very cautious industry, safety is paramount and these things have to be checked very carefully before the rules can be changed.

“ETOPS procedures have been running for a long time now and we have sufficient confidence in their safety, to sanction this. Engines have to meet very stringent reliability requirements and the aircraft engine systems are subject to increased frequency in maintenance regimes for ETOPS approval.”

DaimlerChrysler Aviation currently runs a shuttle service between Stuttgart, Germany and Auburn Hills, Michigan with its 44-seat A319CJ. Vp of flight operations Birger Wendt told EBAN: “We currently have 120 minutes ETOPS approval for flight operations and maintenance JAR 145. Having 180 minutes would not make a great difference to the present routing but we will check with the German authority as to what is required to get 180 minutes.”

The new JAA rule, which is expected to be published as an amendment to JAR OPS 1.245 in February, will be accompanied by an Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC), which outlines what an operator must do to gain approval to operate up to 180 minutes.