Air Tour and Sport Parachuting Safety Improvement Act of 2023
This bill requires the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to update safety standards for commercial air tour operators (i.e., sightseeing airplane and helicopter flights).
Within three years of the bill's enactment, all commercial air tour operators, with exceptions, must hold an air carrier certificate or commercial operator certificate. The FAA must implement procedures to improve the process for obtaining these certificates.
The FAA must also issue regulations requiring commercial air tour operators and other specified operators to implement appropriate safety management systems. This is a formal, organization-wide approach to safety risk that includes systematic procedures, practices, and policies.
The FAA must issue new or revised regulations requiring that all certificated commercial air tour operators incorporate into their training programs avoidance training for controlled flight into terrain and in-flight loss of control.
The FAA must also convene aviation rulemaking committees and, within three years of the bill's enactment, issue final regulations
- establishing a performance-based standard for flight data monitoring for all commercial air tour operators,
- requiring all commercial air tour operators to install flight data recording devices and implement a flight data monitoring program,
- establishing methods to provide effective traffic avoidance in identified high-traffic tour areas (e.g., requiring air tour operators to be equipped with Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) surveillance technology), and
- governing specified issues related to sports parachute operations conducted in the United States.