The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has moved to allow some flying schools to self-declare compliance to a simpler set of rules rather than be subject to intense oversight.
Regulation 2018/1119 will enable flying school training pilots to the PPL level only to bypass the requirements set down for schools doing CPL training or higher. These schools are designated Declared Training Organisations (DTO).
"Annex VII (Part-ORA) constitutes an appropriate legal framework for certifying organisations providing training for the purpose of obtaining commercial pilot licences," the new regulation states.
"However, the requirements laid down therein are unnecessarily burdensome and not proportionate for organisations which only provide training for the purpose of obtaining non-commercial pilot licences and specific ratings, privileges and certificates, taking account of the costs incurred, the nature and scale of their activities and the risks and benefits for aviation safety.
"As noted in the European Aviation Safety Agency's General Aviation Road Map, a simpler system should therefore be developed for those organisations. For those reasons, those organisations should be made subject to a set of specific requirements and not be subject to a requirement of prior approval by the competent authority.
"Instead, they should be allowed to declare to the competent authority that they comply with those requirements applicable to them."
EASA believes that special requirements for DTOs should include simplified safety procedures to take into account the low-risk environment that PPLs operate in, a competent authoritiy to exercise oversight and internal reviews to ensure record-keeping.
The oversight authority would also need to ensure that they are "proportionate, sufficiently flexible, founded on a risk-based approach and consistent with the specific requirements for DTOs."
The full EASA regulation can be read by following the link below.