FAA proposes faster aircraft certification with Europe-aligned rules
FAA proposed Europe-aligned certification rules that would trim exemptions and special findings, aiming to speed approvals without weakening safety. Commenting closes Aug. 25.
The Federal Aviation Administration proposed a sweeping rewrite of transport-airplane certification rules on Thursday, setting up a faster approval path that the agency says will still hold safety line by line. The notice, filed as FAA docket FAA-2026-0430 and RIN 2120-AL42, would modernize standards for transport-category airplanes and propulsion systems while reducing the number of exemptions, special conditions and equivalent-level-of-safety findings used in the process.
At the center of the proposal is a familiar industry tradeoff: certification has long taken years, with manufacturers often cycling through testing, documentation and repeated regulator back-and-forth before a new model or major variant can enter service. The FAA said the changes would cut certification costs and time for both industry and the agency, while maintaining or even increasing safety. The comment deadline is Aug. 25, 2026.
The agency also moved to pull U.S. rules closer to those used in Europe. In Chantilly, Virginia, on June 18, the FAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency pledged deeper cooperation and reaffirmed their commitment to global aviation safety through more collaboration, transparency and trust. For manufacturers such as Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and Bombardier, that alignment matters because it can mean fewer duplicated demands and more predictable timelines when designing new aircraft or variants.
The proposal also addressed a more technical piece of the rulebook: it would remove Special Federal Aviation Regulation No. 109 from Part 25 and relocate some of its requirements. The FAA said the action would respond to industry and National Transportation Safety Board recommendations, and it sits under the broader direction of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which was signed on May 16, 2024, and runs through fiscal year 2028.
The push for speed comes with a sharper emphasis on oversight. On its certification-reform page, the FAA said it has been delegating less responsibility to manufacturers and increasing oversight, including a Boeing safety-culture review panel appointed in January 2023 that issued 53 recommendations in September 2024, all of which the FAA said it agreed with. The agency also said it strengthened oversight of Organization Designation Authorization holders in September 2022 to guard against employer interference. That history underscores the politics of the current rewrite: regulators are trying to make approvals faster after years of scrutiny over certification failures, without giving Boeing or any other manufacturer a lighter safety burden.
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