The U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee has approved a bill to reauthorize the FAA by a unanimous vote. The Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act (H.R. 3935) was introduced last Friday by T&I Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., full Committee Ranking Member Rick Larsen, D-Wash., Aviation Subcommittee Chairman Garret Graves, R-La., and Aviation Subcommittee Ranking Member Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. According to the committee, H.R. 3935 aims to improve FAA efficiency and operations, grow the aviation workforce, encourage aviation innovation, improve the airline passenger experience and address aviation safety issues. It also includes provisions covering airport infrastructure funding and authorization updates for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). In addition, an amendment was added by a vote of 32 to 31 that would would raise the retirement age for commercial airline pilots from 65 to 67.
People need to be careful what they wish for. This bill is huge and has several items buried in it that a lot a different groups may not be happy about. There is a requirement for video cameras in the cockpit of pt121 planes with some very weak legal prohibitions on who gets access to those videos. A few other items the FAA has either refused or not implemented to make the NTSB happy. The way the prohibition on “tail end” pt 91 repositioning flights is written, it will be interesting to see how that can be implemented without affecting normal pt91 ops, if passed.
I’m not sure I understand - that section (524, if anyone’s keeping track) applies specifically to “any operation conducted by a flightcrew member during an assigned duty period under the operational control of an operator holding a certificate under 19 part 135 […]”
Given that, I don’t see it having any effect on pt91 ops?
On the other hand, I see some other good stuff in there such as expanding BasicMed (Sec. 203) and prohibiting using ADS-B to initiate investigations (205).
Its going to be interesting to see how they manage the operations portion of the FAA which includes staffing and hiring when the proposed operations budget for 2024 is $2.5 billion lower than 2023, and in fact every year though 2028 is lower than 2023 by the billion(s). The FAA has a crisis on hand and its bleeding is not stopping.