Eastair, the operator of Learjet aircraft in Sweden, has recently been JAR OPS 1 approved by the country’s NAA. But not without a struggle. Janne Oesterwall gave EBAN an insight into what was involved in a process which, labour excluded, cost the company about US$43,000.

“According to the JAA’s own description of how the application for JAR OPS 1 approval should be taken care of, the time expectation from first date of application to approval is 90 days.

I have to say, it took us a good eight months and we complained to Hoofddorp many times. Our conclusion about the delay is that our NAA is, or at least has been, inefficient in this matter.

Looking back these last years we, the market, should have demanded our NAA to adopt five to ten guys from the JAA HQ who could have taken control.

Bearing in mind all the SIP-OPS (Swedish Implementations Exem-ptions) we had to incorporate into our manuals, maybe that’s the answer. It’s as though our NAA is not going to follow the JAA rules precisely.

It was also unlucky that our application was handled by two officers in a row who retired after a while.

We’re going to try to convince our NAA not to give their employees more and more responsibility as the years go by, with the result that the officer has top-ranking power the same day he retires.

Instead we will recommend a slow decline in their responsible duties which could lead to a situation whereby the subject officer in the last six months has briefed some newcomer about the ongoing projects and lets

that person pretty much take over his duties.

All this is to ensure that important topics will not ‘fall between stools’ in the future.

To overcome some of our problems, we simply looked at somebody else's already approved documentation which became mistake number one.

After telling the NAA about it, it was their opinion that if your material is of ‘foreign’ origin, it is automatically rejected. All of it.

Our advice to others entering this process would be this: If you’re in a hurry to start flying and are a private/corporate operator, transform your aircraft into N-, VP- or VR-registration.

That will make things much easier and much faster; alternatively join somebody else, national or international, who is already approved; handle all your operations as if you’re a broker and sub-charter it all.

If you’re not in a hurry, wait until the ‘new’ authority (EASA) is up and running in 2002.

They will take firm control over all the European NAAs and hopefully ensure the smooth running of this process.”

Janne Oesterwall, Eastair