OPS balloon regulations: EASA publishes part “BOP”, specific operation rules for ballooning.

After 3 years of continuous work, the European Agency for Safety in Aviation (EASA) and the  European Ballooning federation (EBF) are happy and proud to announce that the OPS Balloon  Regulation (Regulation 2018/395) and the Regulation amending Regulation 965/2012 (Regulation  2018/394) have been published. 

On October 9th2014, most European countries decided to “opt out” as proposed by EASA, and  postpone the enforcement of the new regulations for general and leisure aviation to April 8th 2018.  On January 21st2015, Patrick Ky, EASA Executive Director, and Dominique Roland, EASA Director for  General Aviation, proposed to the EBF Bureau (Patricia Lamy, Karel Abbenes and Phil Dunnington) that  ballooning could become a model for changes. A first programme for Part OPS ballooning was adopted:  an expert working group, composed by balloonists from EBF, NAAs and manufacturers, and led by  EASA’s Jan Boettcher, started to work in March 2015 on the new Training Organization, Part Ops and  Part FCL for balloons.     

This new procedure for Rule Making Task (RMT) is a faster track to produce regulations, and above all  a complete involvement of the stakeholders, in this case European balloonists. As the method was  satisfactory, it was extended to other parts of the regulations: FCL (licences) and Training (with the  creation of a “DTO” replacing the “ATO”) are in progress and will be finalised before the summer of  this year. For balloons there is a possibility to introduce Part DTO in April 2020 Part BOP the Operations  rules will be implemented by April 8th2019. Part FCL now called Part BAC will be ready April 2020. The  whole set of balloons regulations, or “balloon book” should be ready and implemented in April 2020. 

Patrick Ky, EASA Executive Director said: “I am very pleased with the new rules for balloons. They are  a typical example of how we want to regulate aviation safety: less complex and more flexible rules,  proportionate to the specificity and risks of operations. These rules are expected to maintain a high  level of safety while reducing the regulatory and administrative burden, in this case for balloon pilots  and operators”.   

Patricia Lamy, EBF President, is quite proud of this achievement: “when we first came to see Patrick Ky  in 2015, it was a question of life and death for ballooning. Karel Abbenes, (EBF Vice‐President) Phil  Dunnington (EBF General Secretary) and myself could not imagine that a European administration  would understand our concerns; the result is that we are producing balloonist friendly regulations, and  our next step is to help our members to implement them in their countries.”   

More information: see here for ballooning operations: https://www.easa.europa.eu/regulations.  Today, March 26th 2018, the AMC and GM have also been published:  (https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/EDD%202018‐004R%20‐%20Annex%20II%20‐%20Part‐BOP.pdf)