Revisions to Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance Rule

This rule amends the maintenance rules to allow properly trained pilots of aircraft type certificated for 9 or fewer passenger seats and operated under 14 CFR Part 135 to perform certain maintenance tasks on their aircraft. This rule also adds certain tasks to those items considered to be preventive maintenance. The changes are needed because a large number of exemption requests has demonstrated a need for pilots conducting certain types of operations to be able to respond more rapidly to emergency medical missions and to reconfigure cabins to accommodate changing needs to transport varying combinations of passenger and/or cargo in situations when a certificated mechanic is not available to perform the required maintenance task. This rule will improve emergency response and flight turnaround times for these operations, and will relieve the public and agency burdens of filing and processing exemptions.