IAOPA Europe is to ask EASA to extend the deadline for re-equipment with 8.33MHz avionics by at least one or even better two years.
The Association is seeing a bottleneck in availability of avionics for retrofit which will not allow many aircraft owners to meet the fleet-wide deadline of 31 December 2017.
‘This prolongation is considered largely harmless for the fact that the frequency scarcity that was feared a few years ago has materialised only in a weaker form which also makes it possible to extend the deadline by one or two years,’ notes IAOPA.
‘At a recent Eurocontrol meeting it was made clear that most of the European Air Navigation Service Providers will also not be able to meet the deadline.’
