IEM to above definition It is not intended that a person’s date of birth is their first birthday, and persons born on 29 February will be considered to have reached their second birthday on 1 March, two years after their birth.
Proposal 5: Civil Aircraft
The Operational Committee has decided to use the terms ‘civil aeroplane’ and ‘civil helicopter’ in the applicability paragraph to JAR–OPS. The statement made in NPA 1–7 that production of a definition of ‘Civil Aircraft’ would not be required prior to the adoption of a JAA Convention has been superseded by events.
The NPA proposal was based on the one included in the draft Convention which is a ‘high level’ text. It was written in a positive sense as the Convention says what is not a Civil Aircraft. The necessary flexibility needed to allow for the different treatment of police, customs aircraft, etc. in the various states today was introduced by the word ‘treats as being in the service of the State’. The definition is different from the ICAO one (see Art. 3 of Chicago Convention: ‘Aircraft used in military, customs and police services are deemed to be State Aircraft’) as this definition is not appropriate in some JAA States (e.g. UK).
The words ‘permanently’ or ‘temporarily’ indicate that an aircraft could be treated as being in service of the State for just one flight. Finally the definition is not limited to the aircraft on JAA States registers.
Although a few comments were received on this topic, it was clear to the WG that the term causes difficulty in certain States. However, those NAAs who questioned whether or not the proposal implied that the exact determination had been left to the State are correct, and the WG notes their support that this should be the case.
One NAA wished to see all aircraft on the civil register declared as civil aircraft. This would have left no flexibility, and would have caused great problems for those States who do not do as proposed. The comment was not adopted.