After years of debate the ICAO Council has set its ‘seal of approval’ on worldwide commercial passenger and cargo operations by single-engine turboprops at night and/or

in IMC (loosely abbreviated to

SET and SE-IMC). Annex 6 is now being amended and this will

permit the use of reliable turbine-powered aircraft, such as the

Cessna 208 Caravan, Pilatus PC 12 and TBM 700. Countries should now adopt the ICAO standards into their national requirements.

Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have already agreed to implement the JAA NPA Ops 29

for passenger and cargo operations, and France and Spain have done

so for cargo. Many tens of

thousands of hours have been flown in Europe at night and in severe weather conditions.

Many countries around the world approve SE-IMC operations and more than 2,000 SET aircraft have been delivered to over 70 countries. The fleet has now flown in excess of eight million hours.\r

The ICAO standards and guidelines are generally very similar to JAA NPA Ops-29, which is a mature document developed over some 12 years of consultation with the European NAAs, manufacturers, operators and industry. However, as a result of the ever-improving safety record of SET aircraft, ICAO has wisely incorporated significant changes.

The NAAs of certain countries within the JAA (namely those with no experience of SE-IMC operations) were reluctant to accept the reliability of the safety statistics which showed that during the 12 year period from 1990 to 2002 – and 3.62 million hours of commercial operation – there had been no loss of thrust (engine failure) that had resulted in the loss of life to a crew member, passenger or a person on the ground. For this reason, some NAAs asked for limits to the risk periods to be written into the NPA.

In order to reach general agreement and make progress within the JAA it was decided to incorporate a 15-minute risk period that could be used only once in every flight. Originally it was 15 minutes during the cruise sector.

ICAO Annex 6 states that the availability of forced landing areas at all points along a route is not specified for these aeroplanes because of the very high engine reliability, additional systems and operational equipment, procedures and training requirements specified.

The JAA NPA has additional

initial and recurrent training requirements over and above those recommended by ICAO and, as a result, it is hoped that JAA NAAs will revert to a more realistic approach to risk assessment by adopting the standards in ICAO Annex 6.

Compliance with Annex 6, where it recommends using the 15-minute risk period for operations over water would, depending upon altitude and speed, enable SET aircraft to operate over water for distances varying from 120/160 to nearly 300 miles. An increase of the period up to 30 minutes for 10 per cent of the flights would only increase the FAR (Fatal Accident Risk) from 0.46 to 0.47 per million hours. When ETOPS was introduced, the initial limit was 60 minutes. Now this has increased to 180 or 207 for specific designs. The increase was justified by the demonstrated improvement in reliability of the engines and systems. SET have already proven the appropriate reliability and the JAA should adopt the ICAO standards. \r

Some JAA Authorities that still voice opposition to SE-IMC operations (i.e. those with no experience of SE-IMC operations) do so not on the basis of safety but of legal liability and public acceptance. All JAA NAAs exist to regulate the safety of air transport. The safety case for SE-IMC has clearly been demonstrated, yet the JAA have been debating it for over 12 years.

ICAO’s standards now supports SE-IMC therefore now, and without further delay or procrastination, the JAA Regulatory and Operational Sectorial Teams should accept the draft requirements that comply with the ICAO Standard so that the JAA Committee can approve NPA OPS 29 at its June meeting. To do otherwise would leave the JARs non-compliant with ICAO Standards. The approval would permit operators to offer the general public the choice of flying in approved SE Turbine aircraft and would miss the opportunity to improve the current relatively poor safety record of light commercial operations in Europe.

Bob Crowe, Cranfield Airport