EU-OPS General Requirements — Page 13, Lesson 22

I want to walk you through the EU-OPS General Requirements, starting with the applicability of EU-OPS Part 1. This part contains and defines the requirements for operating civil aircraft in Commercial Air Transport, which we abbreviate as CAT. It applies to any operator whose principal place of business is in an EASA Member State — that's the European Aviation Safety Agency's member countries. Now, there are specific exclusions. EU-OPS Part 1 does not apply to aeroplanes used in military, police, or customs and excise operations. It also doesn't apply to parachute dropping and firefighting flights, including the positioning flights for those purposes, even if persons are carried on board for that purpose. And it doesn't apply to flights for aerial work, provided that no more than six persons engaged in that aerial work — excluding the crew — are carried in the aeroplane. There's also a provision about training devices. When a Synthetic Training Device, or STD — such as a flight simulator — is used to replace an aeroplane for training purposes, that STD must be approved in accordance with CS-STD, which is the Certification Specification for Synthetic Training Devices. Additionally, the users of that device must be approved by the authority. Next, let's talk about common language. Operators are required to ensure that all crew members — both flight crew and cabin crew — are able to communicate with each other in a common language. They also need to be able to understand the language in which the parts of the Operations Manual that contain their duties are written. So it's not just about speaking; it's about comprehension of the manual. Moving on to the Quality System. The operator is required to establish a Quality System to ensure safe operational practices and airworthy aeroplanes. A Quality Manager must be appointed to ensure compliance with that quality system. Compliance monitoring must include a feed-back system to the Accountable Manager — we'll see more about that role in Chapter 3. The Accountable Manager has responsibility to the Authority for compliance with the requirements of the Air Operator Certificate, or AOC. Then we have the Accident Prevention and Flight Safety Programme. Each operator is required to establish and maintain such a programme, and it may be integrated with the Quality System. The programme is to be administered by a person appointed by the operator. This programme must include four key elements: risk awareness, occurrence reporting, incident and accident evaluation, and flight data monitoring. The programme manager is responsible for implementing proposals that come out of the programme and for monitoring how effective those proposals are. Finally, there's a requirement for additional crew members. If additional crew members are carried on operational flights — for example, personnel engaged in checking, non-operating crew, or even veterinarian personnel when animals are carried — the operator must ensure that such personnel are properly trained and proficient in the execution of their duty. Also, passengers must be able to distinguish between cabin crew and these additional crew members.