For passengers in small airplanes, a change in design rules matters through the protection those rules require. The FAA's December 30, 2016 final rule replaces prescriptive requirements with performance-based airworthiness standards. Its summary identifies stronger requirements for loss of control and icing, including stall characteristics and control of multiengine airplanes. Those are certification provisions, not a report of fewer accidents. [2016-30246]

The normal-category boundary is specific: a passenger-seating configuration of 19 or fewer and a maximum certificated takeoff weight of 19,000 pounds or less. Both limits apply. Carrying fewer people on a particular trip cannot bring a larger seating configuration within that definition; nor can a lighter load substitute for the certificated weight limit. [2016-30246]

The March 14 proposal shows that the redesign was selective rather than a wholesale removal of safeguards. It proposed performance- and risk-based divisions but no substantive changes to cockpit voice recorder or flight data recorder provisions, apart from aligning references in the latter. That history helps distinguish rewriting design requirements from abandoning the obligation to preserve flight information. [2016-05493]

The final rule still requires an Administrator-accepted means of compliance. For people relying on the aircraft, that is the important counterweight to design flexibility: manufacturers must demonstrate compliance through an accepted method. The published effective date is August 30, 2017, still ahead of this coverage date. Proposal and final rule document one FAA process; they establish its protective design, not its eventual passenger-safety results. [2016-30246][2016-05493]

Source documents

  1. Revision of Airworthiness Standards for Normal, Utility, Acrobatic, and Commuter Category Airplaneshttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-12-30/html/2016-30246.htm
  2. Revision of Airworthiness Standards for Normal, Utility, Acrobatic, and Commuter Category Airplaneshttps://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2016-03-14/html/2016-05493.htm