The General Aviation maintenance community is up in arms over the FAA’s so-called “Moss Interpretation” of how much direct, in-person supervision is required by FAA-certificated airframe and powerplant (A&P) technicians and inspectors when it comes to work being performed by owners or shop apprentices and trainees working toward certification. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and others, the new ruling overrides policies in effect for more than 60 years that enable licensed mechanics to use their judgment in overseeing maintenance and modification work.
Mark thank you for giving this story at least some scant visibility, as late to the story as you are. Having thanked you, I’ll also say that the visibility you have given it in no way even scratches the surface of details which should be known by this community.
Days ago Jeff Simon on Social Flight conducted an interview with Mike Busch which more than covered the subject in depth. When AvWeb is as late to the game as AvWeb has been with this story, the least AvWeb could have done was to buy/make whatever arrangements are needed to give the story the extensive coverage it deserves by referencing Jeff Simon’s interview with Mike Busch.
No one is going to like my take but I agree with the FAA on this point. My limited 49 year experience, most recently as A/C inspector for a major airline as well as active IA, DEMANDS that i have to look at everything . This became especially critical post Covid with the loss of skilled technicians and the influx of the new lightly trained and no-experienced mechanics. And i use the term mechanic loosely at this point. When i have to reject placard installs, and see mechanics safety engine mount bolts backwards and not being able to read instructions, exactly what do you want me to NOT look at. And this is just at the airline level. I was in my FBO hanger today, and witnessed a "technician’ changing a tire. Despite having a bead breaker on the floor 8ft away from him, he was trying to squeeze the tire off the rim in a vise. Must have read a method from a very verbal aviation writer. So who is watching and supervising these yahoos?
The FAA is going way to loose in requirements to become a mechanic. This is NOT the time to rely on the "common-sense interpretation we’ve relied on for decades.” And i don’t trust the FAA…
I fully share planemechs take on the issue. The rule puts a damper on a very questionable and abusive interpretation of the rule. Its long overdue as a lot of funky stuff has developed and needs some checking. I too was suprised by AVwebs prolonged silence on it.
Owner assisted maintenance (remotely supervised) may be a great intermediate way to reduce cost and deflect attention away from a severe lack of properly qualified A&P’s. But… knowing what happens when self-declared mechanics screw around with stuff makes this scary, idiotic and mindboggling.
Having been exposed to this so called owner assisted maintenance world, I am all for owners and pilots learning more about their aircraft and powerplant by actually assisting the A&P in a directly supervised and controlled environment. I’d love to see mandatory technical training as a part of pilot training as so many systems are much better understood when some exposure was possible.
We all know that some individuals should not be anywhere close to a plane to begin with. Now imagine giving such a ding-dong a toolbox, access to a maintenance shop and the legal authority to fudge around.
To me, this sounds more like the storyline of the next Final Destination movie than anything resembling a synonym of common sense, at least in todays environment.
I do understand the reaction to this rules new interpretation, but think that untrained people are not the answer to systemic shortages in qualified staff. Why not endeavor to get the A&P IA? What makes this job so unattractive?
I’m glad this was brought to light so that real change can be made and we can put pressure on the FAA to change the rule and specifically allow the type of video surveillance of non-certificated mechanics that Busch advocates for. Procedures need to be codified to specify how mechanics can supervise remotely to ensure adequate oversight and safety is maintained. Technology multiplies the access to mechanics and mechanics retain the right and responsibility to withhold return to service signoffs if they feel they don’t have sufficient information.
Doing it the way it’s always been done is not a sustainable option. There are insufficient A&Ps to meet the needs of GA. Either we adapt to new tech or we turn out the lights on GA and become Europe.
I understand the concern for defining adequate supervision, but my experience is that a knucklehead is a knucklehead whether they have an A&P/IA or not.
Some of my worst experiences were from FAA certificated mechanics who, when working on my experimental, acted more like the proverbial “cable guy” randomly drilling holes all over your house…I trusted those certificated mechs to use their training and experience to inform their efforts but they instead treated an experimental as “no rules” since there was no “book”.
In the years since, I learned to work on my experimental from responsible adults in a knucklehead free zone, including both type experienced non-certificated and non-type experienced certificated mechanics in on the conversations.
…and knucklehead free zone should also extend to FAA staff issuing directives or providing “clarifications”.
JJBaker and PlaneMech both give great examples of incompetent mechanics that this new interpretation is designed to protect against.
However, this means ALL mechanics, no matter how well trained, are going to be judged as equally incompetent until they become an A&P/IA.
You could have an A&P with years of riveting experience. He’s riveting a skin patch that is part of a major repair. His work has been without blemish on all previous riveting jobs - every shop tail the right size, every hole drilled and rivet set correctly with no dimples, smiles, or snowman. Yet because of this new interpretation the IA now has to personally observe every rivet, watch every cleco, every debur of every hole, every set of every rivet. And then bill the customer two man-hours for every hour worked.
The regulation reads “to the extent necessary”. This gave the IA the ability to decide how much oversight a mechanic needed. If an IA had a mediocre mechanic he would observe him more, train him more, or get rid of him. And with a good mechanic the IA would observe him less. But the FAA has taken away that IA’s ability. Everyone is now considered incompetent.
I got out of airplane ownership just in time I guess. Got old and sold my last plane 4 years ago. I’d had it for 20 years, same IA signed off the annual each year, and after the first year, I did the owner assist thing and he would come around and look it over. It was a case of our confidence in each other. But, I’m out of it now and y’all remaining, and the FAA, do as you wish
Another stride forward in the march to stamp out reason. The sad thing is that this interpretation almost certainly was crafted specifically to help out the prosecution side in some enforcement action.
This is one of those situations for which the recent SCOTUS ruling regarding Federal agencies will come into play. Under the original Chevron ruling, courts were required to uphold a Federal agency’s interpretation of a given statute absent a Congressional interpretation. Now, courts can make judgements on agency interpretation on their own. I think a legal argument can be made that requiring direct supervision of workers at all times is unnecessarily burdensome, especially given that the system has worked for so long without that requirement.
They shouldn’t just be concerned about the effects this will have on the industry because of manpower issues, but because of cost as well. Increase the cost of maintenance and repairs even further and you shrink private GA which shrinks the industry. I’m sure some shops can survive exclusively on commercial GA and taking care of a private GA fleet where a $100,000 40 year old 172 is considered reasonable but a lot of them won’t. If labor rates and hours billed have to increase even more, driving more people to sell their airplanes, it’s going to reduce demand as well.
Right on Kirk. I would recommend actually reading Mike Busch’s response. Although lengthy, it’s very thorough and spot on.
Some respondents are conflating the old rule with incompetent technicians. Keeping the existing system puts the onus on the supervising A&P as it always has. Now, they can supervise as much or little as necessary. The bottom line is that it’s their license or business that is at stake if they pencil whip. Following the new rule, the supervisor has to be immediately available, I.e. looking over their shoulder. It’s draconian. Think of how much valuable time will be wasted by experienced A&P’s personally witnessing the 100th cylinder removal by the same apprentice, over and over again when their understudy is at the 1,799 hour mark…
Now, there’s no forcing feature to force an A&P to sign off on any work, be it owner assisted or training an apprentice. If they’re not satisfied, do it again!
So it all comes down to responsibility in the system and enforcement of current rules. Let’s not take another step toward making aviation even harder, especially for no good reason!
Do your job, follow the rules, supervise those you’re supposed to! Don’t sign off on questionable, non spec work! Let’s go fly.
Regarding FAA Legal Interpretations, my FAA PMI shared the following: “This interpretation is coming from FAA Legal. It is an interpretation and considered an opinion. It may or may not hold up in court.”
Additionally, keep in mind this is the same group that redefined the term “current” in FAR 91.409(f)(3).
I’m also aware that two major airframe manufacturers currently use video inspection for DAR/ODA aircraft conformities. It’s also common practice to send borescope and video footage to engine manufacturers, such as Rolls Royce, for evaluations on turbine engines. While AC 43-204 (now canceled) briefly covered this, the FAA issued several policy letters during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the use of remote technologies, such as Policy Statement PS-AIR-21-1901. The summary of this statement reads:
“The FAA has determined that the performance of certain inspections and tests using remote technology can be more cost-effective, improve certification timeliness, and reduce FAA resource burdens. This policy provides information on the use of remote technology to perform prototype conformity inspections, engineering and ground tests, engineering compliance inspections, production conformity inspections, and inspections for the issuance of an Authorized Release Certificate, FAA Form 8130-3, Airworthiness Approval Tag.”
To my knowledge, the FAA has not rescinded this Policy Letter.
JetTech’s first sentence says it all. I would not be surprised if the various FSDO’s have their own interpretation just like they do on other issues. Try getting field approvals at certain FSDOs. The time and duty rules under pt 135 is another. FSDOs in some areas have their own interpretation that does not follow Washington’s legal interpretation. Under this maintenance interpretation I would not have been able to get my A&P myself with the experience route. Amazing how the FAA keeps coming up with ways to screw participants in GA.
So I guess it is my inner libertarian showing but I get really frustrated every time the response to someone doing something stupid is to institute regulation/laws that restrict everyone that isn’t doing anything wrong. Yes there are people out there who do poor maintenance on their aircraft however in 12 years as an maintenance engineer I have seen A&Ps I would not trust with my aircraft either. Let us think about this from another perspective. Last year there were over 40,000 deaths in the US due to car crashes which dwarfs the number of deaths in aviation most of which are due to people not paying attention or knowing how to properly drive. Are you willing to allow the government to restrict drivers only to those who are licensed under a very expensive and time-consuming training program in order to reduce this number?
Every time we add regulation to correct an issue it adds significant expense and time to whatever that thing is. Large entities can absorb this, small ones cease to exist. GA (at least the piston engine side) is a small entity we are already on the brink of being too expensive to be viable it would not take much more to end it entirely. Do we really want to end up in a situation where the only aviation is commercial, business jets and the occasional guy with a powered parachute? We are already headed in that direction we do not want to push it further.
So when we have issues in aviation can we discuss ways to fix them without the immediate response being that the FAA needs to do something? Maybe the A&P/IAs can offer to teach classes to owners on what they can and can’t do and what kinds of things they need to ask for help on.
Also maybe we should ask is this really enough of an issue that we need to do anything at all? Have there been enough accidents that this was an issue on that it is worth the problems that are caused every time the FAA gets involved. I work for the USAF as an engineer and I can tell you that the government does not care how much there decisions hurt you. Everything is significantly more expensive and takes way longer than it should. The reason for this is very simple. A government employees’ primary consideration is keeping their job and getting promoted. They have no incentive to sign off on anything that might hurt there career if something goes wrong so the tendency is to delay and refuse to do anything without repeated studies and investigations on things that loosen regs and be all for things that add cost and time.
I know it seems to be really unpopular in GA recently to suggest that we need to be willing to accept risk but the reality is nothing in life is without risk and it is entirely possible to price ourselves entirely out of doing something attempting to reduce risk.
Except with this “Moss Interpretation”, “assisting the A&P” means the A&P has to directly supervise everything you do, which will likely be slower than they would be able to do it on their own and thus will increase the cost of the annual to a point where it may not be worth doing an “owner-assisted” annual any more. This interpretation will actually be a step backwards in safety if it means fewer aircraft owners doing owner-assists. I personally have learned a lot about the aircraft I fly thanks to owner-assists, but I’d have to think twice about doing another one if it means having to pay for more shop hours.
How does one go from untrained to trained and earn their A&P IA? There is formal classroom training time, but it also requires a certain amount of real-world time. If the supervisor now has to stand over the shoulder of every not-yet-certified mechanic for every little task, I could see shops turning away otherwise qualified mechanics if they don’t already have their IA because they just don’t have the time to supervise every little task. This is yet another area where this ruling could actually lead to a reduction in safety as overworked shops either become more overworked in supervision, or just aren’t able to find any IAs to hire.
To me, this ruling is effectively the same as if the FAA said that student pilots can only solo an aircraft if their instructor personally supervises every solo flight. If the student has an accident or busts airspace, it’s still the instructor who is responsible, so any competent instructor is only going to sign off their student when they have no doubts about their skills. It’s the same thing with the IAs; they are the ones signing the logbooks, so they are endorsing all work that was done on the aircraft. As a result, they have an incentive to supervise and review the work in any area that they feel is warranted.
Okay, I was following along with your thoughts and generally agreeing, but you lost me with this one line:
A government employees’ primary consideration is keeping their job and getting promoted.
Making generalized statements is lazy criticism. All government employees? So, air traffic controllers primary consideration is keeping their job, not aircraft and human safety? park service officers, FBI agents, FEMA Responders and agents, Coast Guard members…Perhaps you could be more specific, for clarity, like FAA lawyers or FAA bureaucrats, or FAA something something since this article is about the FAA.
It may be that most of the people that work in government do so because they like public service. Who does not want more pay, a better job because that very much occurs in the private sector as well. There are always a few bad actors and I can agree that there can regulations that need review, but just bitching about “government bad” overlooks the good government serves. The thing about our government is, if you don’t like a regulation you can work to change it; don’t like a corporate policy and want to change it…fagittaboutit.
My issue with a libertarian view is that it is close to the line of anarchy. libertarianism has this ideal that humans can just “get along”. Living in the aftermath of Helene, I was first hand witness to a few times where libertarianism fell flat on its face. Rules help put structure to Society and reminds people to not break them or there is a consequence. We can argue to many/to few, but don’t argue we don’t need them because…people be good.
While I agree that the courts have the ability to use judgement on complex matters, will they?
The Pilot’s Bill of Rights is a law, that attempted to achieve the same things, and force the NTSB to look at enforcement actions de novo, but instead as soon as it got the chance the ALJs went right back to giving deference to the FAA. I’m not as optimistic about litigation which is also expensive.