US: FAA resumes routine safety rule-making during Trump regulatory freeze

The FAA has resumed issuing routine rules calling for safety fixes to aircraft, following a 19-day pause prompted by President Donald Trump’s government-wide regulatory freeze. The first mandatory safety orders, called airworthiness directives, were published in the Federal Register at the start of this week and five more appeared for public inspection Thursday on the publication’s website. In January, before Trump’s inauguration, some two dozen such rules were released by the FAA. An FAA spokeswoman said Thursday the directives “are critical to ensuring continued aircraft safety” and that goal “will not be compromised. FAA safety directives mandating or proposing inspection, repair or replacement of specific aircraft parts or systems are important parts of the agency’s daily activities. Hundreds of them are issued annually, affecting everything from jumbo jets to private aircraft to gliders. Except for unusual circumstances that require emergency action, cover an unusually large number of aircraft or entail particularly expensive fixes, the rules typically are handled by career FAA officials with little or no involvement of political appointees at the FAA or its parent agency, the Transportation Department. But in the wake of Trump’s executive order putting all new and pending regulations on hold for 60 days, the FAA’s normally low-profile, routine safety directives temporarily were held up by the freeze. The White House order allowed for exemptions due to urgent concerns about health, safety or national security, though it took time for the Trump team to determine that FAA airworthiness directives fell into one of those categories, according to people familiar with the process.<br/>