House committee advances bill to revise FAA certification for advanced air mobility

A US House committee has advanced amended legislation that would require the Federal Aviation Administration to revise parts of how it certifies aircraft built for advanced air mobility missions. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee took up the Aviation Innovation and Global Competitiveness Act, H.R. 7553, during a markup session and approved a substitute amendment.

Under the amended text, the FAA would have 180 days from enactment to publish a plan covering its issue paper process, its use of industry consensus standards, and the development of stable certification policy. The agency would get 270 days to set nonbinding expected time ranges for major certification milestones, among them issue papers, special conditions, exemption requests, and means-of-compliance proposals.

GAMA president and CEO James Viola said in a statement that the measure offers refinements to the FAA's type certification process that can help bring innovative technologies and new products into the global marketplace more effectively.

The bill also addresses unmanned aircraft systems, directing the FAA to shape its certification plan so that unmanned systems have safety, performance, and redundancy comparable to manned aircraft flying similar missions. The text does not define "comparable" or set a numerical safety standard for the comparison, and it contains no provisions specific to AI certification.

The legislation adopts the advanced air mobility definition set out in the 2024 FAA Reauthorization, which spans manned and unmanned aircraft and lists autonomous technologies among those usable for urban and regional air mobility. It would also require updated FAA guidance on certification delegates.