On 11 September 2019, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) released a new Safety Information Bulletin (SIB) available at https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/EASA_SIB_2019_09_R1.pdf/SIB_2019-09R1_1
The SIB document contains new recommendations for 406 ELT and 406 PLB annual testing to fulfil Regulation (EU) 965/2012 on Air Operations.
The annual testing is applicable for all aircraft equipped with Automatic Fixed 406 ELTs (ELT/AF) or Automatic Portable 406 ELTs (ELT/AP) and all aircraft equipped with PLBs .
In the new SIB document, EASA recommends that operators and holders of Type Certificate (TC) or supplemental TC (STC):
- perform an annual verification of the beacon registration,
- if they do not have a maintenance program based on a Maintenance Review Board (MRB) Report:
- perform a self-test of 406 ELTs and 406 PLBs as required by the manual of the beacon manufacturer,
- perform on an annual basis and in accordance with the terms and conditions laid down in the relevant provisions of Regulation (EU) 1321/2014, as revised, a visual inspection of the ELTs combined with a test and an inspection in accordance with the Appendix 1 of this SIB,
- verify that the Instructions for Continued Airworthiness (ICA) relating to the affected products and modifications include tasks to address the correct functioning of their 406 ELTs at appropriate intervals (if the MRB Process is not used to justify the tasks and intervals, EASA’s recommendation is to implement an annual visual inspection of the 406 ELTs combined with a test and an inspection in accordance with the Appendix 1 of the new SIB),
- ensure that the maintenance instructions of the affected products and any modifications thereto include the precaution to avoid the transmission of the operational alerts described in Appendix 1 of the new SIB.