The FAA will badly miss a deadline to overhaul decades-old light aircraft certification rules, a top agency official told lawmakers. News of the delay drew condemnation from members of Congress and aviation leaders, who say the agency is shirking its obligations, and raised fresh doubts about the ability of manufacturers to keep pace with rapidly changing technology.
Congress and President Obama gave the FAA a deadline of December 2015 to complete the hotly anticipated Part 23 rewrite, but FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety Peggy Gilligan said during a House aviation subcommittee hearing that overhauling the regulations will take far longer than originally anticipated — two full years longer, in fact.
