FAA ISSUES FINAL RULE ON AIRPORT SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
March 6, 2023
On February 16, 2023, the FAA issued a press release announcing its draft final rule aimed at helping airports mitigate safety issues before they occur by requiring certain airport certificate holders to develop, implement, maintain and adhere to an airport safety management system (“SMS”). According to the final rule, which was officially published on February 23, an airport SMS must include at a minimum a safety policy, safety risk management component, safety assurance component, and a safety promotion component. The final rule will be applicable to certificated airports that fall into at least one of the following categories: (a) airports classified as large, medium, or small hubs based on passenger data extracted from the FAA Air Carrier Activity Information System, (b) airports that have a 3-year rolling average of 100,000 or more total annual operations, meaning the total number of all arrivals and departures, or (c) airports that serve any international operation other than general aviation. Based on these criteria, the final rule will be applicable to about 265 certificated U.S. airports. As a first step, certificate holders will be required to identify their plans for developing and implementing SMS through an FAA-approved Implementation Plan and must submit their SMS Implementation Plans based on their category. From that point, the affected certificated airports would work to fully implement SMS over the next several years.
The final rule becomes effective on April 24, 2023.
If you have any questions, please contact Evelyn Sahr (esahr@eckertseamans.com 202-659-6622) or Drew Derco (dderco@eckertseamans.com 202-659-6665).
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