The FAA and EASA recently took further steps to ease product validations, including signing a new agreement that will result in lower approval fees. The Bilateral Oversight Board Decision 0008 (BOB 0008) was endorsed during the 17th Annual FAA-EASA International Safety Conference held last week in Washington, D.C., essentially outlining the parameters of involvement of the validating agency, the amount of time, and percent of fees that will be assessed for various validations.

This paves the way to lower fees by reducing the involvement of the validating authority, the FAA said. In addition, the agencies will be able to approve basic type certifications with minimal oversight, the FAA said. The decision “is a further recognition that both the FAA and EASA fully subscribe to the philosophy that safety in today’s global aviation market depends to a great extent on international partnerships between aviation regulators.”

EASA and the FAA further worked to update their validation improvement roadmap designed to encourage the agencies to leverage each other’s certification systems and reduce redundant efforts.