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Washington Report, Jan/Feb 2025
  • 18 Jan 2025 06:18 AM
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Washington Report, Jan/Feb 2025

Republicans Take Control of US Government

Following the results of the 2024 US elections, the Republican Party will have small majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives after being sworn in on Jan. 3, 2025. Control of the White House will also pass to Republicans following the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 20. The US Supreme Court and judicial nominees appointed by Republicans during the previous Trump administration will also give conservatives an edge during court disputes.

Despite this shift in power, a mentality of stalemate and perhaps even caution seems to hang over Capitol Hill, where lawmakers in recent years have taken months to approve nominees, pass budgets or enact legislation with neither party controlling a supermajority in either chamber.

Trump has vowed to cut federal regulations, including by appointing a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). If this philosophy were applied to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), it would block the publication of regulations that industry has been advocating for, including routine publications such as airworthiness approvals.

Trump’s initial nominations that would impact the vertical flight industry include Sean Duffy to lead the US Department of Transportation (DOT). Duffy served as a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, 2011–2019, and has since been a TV host on Fox News and a lobbyist.

For secretary of defense, Trump has selected Pete Hegseth, another former Fox News commentator who founded conservative veterans’ groups after his service with the National Guard at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump plans to nominate private astronaut Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator. The founder and CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company, Isaacman has flown twice in space with SpaceX. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker announced he will step down, only 15 months into a five-year term, after the Trump team indicated plans to replace him.

Slow Progress on Fiscal 2025 Funding

Lawmakers still have not passed any fiscal 2025 budget legislation and have funded the government for months with a series of continuing resolutions, the latest of which was set to expire on Dec. 20. Speculation is that Congress may not complete all of its fiscal 2025 bills until as late as March, halfway through the fiscal year.

The House passed its compromise fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) valued at $883.7B on Dec. 11. A notable rotorcraft provision would order the Secretary of the Army to produce a report on modernizing the Army’s fleet of Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. The House bill must now be conferenced with the Senate version of the policy bill before being signed by the then president.

Both houses of Congress must still separately pass their Defense Appropriations bills, and then the compromise version in the conference committee, before the Pentagon has its funding for the year.

FAA Powered-Lift SFAR

As described in the last issue, the FAA posted a draft of its final rule on Oct. 22 that outlined pilot certification and operations for “powered-lift” aircraft, i.e., winged electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. The final rule, “Integration of Powered-Lift: Pilot Certification and Operations; Miscellaneous Amendments Related to Rotorcraft and Airplanes,” included amendments to FAA regulations and established a Special Federal Aviation Regulation (SFAR) for 10 years “to facilitate the certification of powered-lift pilots, clarify operating rules applicable to operations involving a powered lift [aircraft], and finalize other amendments which are necessary to integrate powered-lift.” The affected sections of Title 14 of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) are Parts 1, 11, 43, 60, 61, 91, 97, 111, 135, 136, 141, 142 and 194. The final rule was officially published in the Federal Register on Nov. 21.

As previously discussed, the final rule had many significant changes from the 2023 notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). The final regulations address many of the concerns from industry as outlined in the comments submitted to the Federal Register (see www.vtol.org/sfar). In particular, the FAA created pathways for the use of certified simulators (Level C and above) for credit toward a powered-lift type rating and provided pathways to non-dual control aircraft type ratings, which were needed for applicants like Joby and Archer.

Under the leadership of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) — with the support of VFS, Vertical Aviation International (VAI) and other associations — a series of in-depth reviews of the final document were conducted, identifying three primary issues that were unclear or contradictory. These concerned the topics of autorotation (see “Autorotation for Powered-Lift Aircraft,” Vertiflite, Jan/Feb 2025), in-aircraft pilot training and qualified flight training devices. In addition, while the FAA created a streamlined approach to getting an instrument-rated, commercial powered-lift license, there is currently a lack of clarity regarding a path to a non-commercial, private (or sport pilot) powered-lift license.

Since the FAA decided to classify eVTOL aircraft as powered-lift aircraft — like the Leonardo AW609 dual-turbine civil tiltrotor — instead of small airplanes (see “Commentary: FAA Changes Course on eVTOL Certification,” Vertiflite, July/Aug 2022), the draft SFAR in 2023 had proposed requiring pilot training in a certificated dual-control, powered-lift aircraft (of which there are currently none). The final SFAR does not require this and offers several alternative pathways for certification as a powered-lift pilot. While the primary dual-control pathway requires 50 hours of powered-lift flight training, each alternative is fairly intricate but requires 35 hours. Each option has a significant time and cost burden, considering that all applicants will need to be commercial fixed-wing or rotarywing pilots to qualify for the alternative pathways.

A potential bandwidth issue is how to get all of the commercial and FAA powered-lift pilots certified to be trainers and inspectors who are approved to certificate pilots, as the FAA currently has few (if any). There will initially be limited numbers of powered-lift (eVTOL and tiltrotor) aircraft to train the FAA inspectors, and thus there is a very small cadre of the necessary powered-lift category- and specific type-rated FAA inspectors for commercial pilots, as well as other FAA inspectors.

The 2023 draft SFAR set a number of challenging requirements to certify flight simulators for powered-lift training devices such that it would have taken years to approve. The final document provides a more reasonable pathway to simulator certification. It requires a Level C Full Flight Simulator (FFS) for training, but — like for other aircraft — now allows the FAA Administrator to approve a deviation on a case-by-case basis. This could allow the use of a Level 7 Flight Training Device (FTD) or new technologies like virtual reality (VR) or mixed reality (MR). The FAA said that there is not sufficient data yet to rely on to give specific guidance.

A Level C FFS is a high-fidelity, six-axis, full motion-based simulator — used for airline and business pilots, including for advanced helicopter models — with very low latency. Level 7 FTDs are also motion based and are model specific for helicopters, with all the necessary aerodynamics, flight controls and systems, including vibration and visual systems, that are appropriate for the aircraft.

In addition, the FAA approach of designating powered-lift aircraft as a different category than helicopters or airplanes causes a divergence for pilot certifications outside the US. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and other authorities that follow the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) guidance to allow pilots to carry over their airplane or helicopter ratings. This could be a significant hurdle for international reciprocity of powered-lift pilot licenses.

The FAA requires the initial complement of pilots and instructors to be trained as Part 135, 141 and 142 certificate holders. This poses a challenge for private pilot candidates who want to operate powered-lift aircraft for personal use. Additionally, the FAA requires pilots to achieve an instrument rating in poweredlift category aircraft, even though these aircraft are not equipped to fly and are not certificated to fly in instrument conditions. Pilots who are required to hold the instrument rating are limited to flight in visual conditions (VFR) as well.

GAMA held its semi-annual AAM session with the FAA on Dec. 3, highlighting some of the issues with representatives from multiple FAA offices. Additional discussions and meetings are planned for January and February to address these areas.

An overarching issue raised is that the document states the rules are “performance-based regulations,” but the document is actually very prescriptive. Notably, the proposed regulations known as Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certificates (MOSAIC) for Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) would allow substantial flexibility for smaller, non-commercial rotorcraft and powered-lift aircraft to come to market via the industry consensus-standard compliance process — thereby bypassing traditional FAA type certification.

The SFAR does not account for the coming powered-lift LSA aircraft, and current requirements for certified simulators and formal FAA-approved type-rating programs may not be appropriate for non-type-certificated aircraft that will exist at a different place on the FAA’s “safety continuum” of risk exposure than the certified, passenger-carrying eVTOL aircraft that were the primary target of the SFAR effort. It remains to be seen if the FAA will address these issues in the final MOSAIC rulemaking. The MOSAIC Final Rule is expected in 2025.

Vertiport Regulations

As discussed in the last issue, the FAA released a first-revision draft of the Engineering Brief (EB) No. 105, Vertiport Design, and industry submitted comments back on this updated draft EB-105A by the Oct. 18 deadline.

Some language regarding helicopters was not well recognized during the one-month review period. The draft document stated that to develop a performance-based heliport design standard, helicopter manufacturers would be required to include performance data in helicopter flight manuals to inform the pilot of an aircraft's capabilities for operations at confined-area landing facilities. This requirement could lead to additional certification requirements that would require rulemaking. Flight testing with helicopter manufacturers would need to include landing precision, downwash outwash profiles, aerodynamic issues and climb/descend gradients.

One of the challenges with the EB-105A and SFAR documents is that the FAA chose to follow an “ex parte” process of no communication between the FAA and outside parties during the development of these rules, which could have been avoided. Historically, close collaboration and technical discussions when developing draft and final standards have proven to result in better regulations and guidance, particularly for novel aircraft and technologies where government personnel may have limited knowledge.

Now that the ex parte period is over, VFS has organized a Vertical Flight Infrastructure Focus Group to work with the FAA Office of Airports to provide informal feedback as the agency moves forward.

There is growing industry/government consensus that, instead of separate heliport and vertiport design guides, there should be a single unified document for all vertical flight infrastructure. This may result in an update to the Heliport Design Guide, 150/5390-2D (dated Jan. 5, 2023) to include vertiports for eVTOL aircraft.

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