FAA supports Trump's attacks on Canada over airplane certifications

By Danny Lee and Leen Al-Rashdan

 

The US Federal Aviation Administration said it expects other countries’ aviation authorities to accept its certifications, as President Donald Trump threatens Canada over certification of Gulfstream jets.  

“Our concern is whether or not sufficient resources are being applied to US products equal to the resources that we’re applying to certify foreign products,” FAA administrator Bryan Bedford said on the sidelines of the Changi Aviation Summit on Monday in Singapore. “So we just want a level playing field.”  

 

Trump last week threatened Canada with a 50 per cent tariff on its country’s planes sold in the US along with stripping globally recognised safety permits from aircraft made in Canada. He complained Ottawa hasn’t yet approved certain jets made by Gulfstream, a unit of General Dynamics Corp., that have already been certified by the FAA.

 

 

Bedford said that when the FAA certifies an aircraft, it expects other agencies to accept the certification.

 

“They normally do a validation program and those things shouldn’t take five, six, and seven years,” he said. 

 

The FAA certified Gulfstream’s newest models, the G700 and G800, in 2025. They have not been certified in Canada because of pending tests on a crucial fuel icing system, but Canadian Industry Minister Melanie Joly said Friday that the certification process was “well under way.”

 

In the US, the FAA gave Gulfstream an exemption on the G700 and G800 until the end of 2026, allowing the planemaker to deliver the model even as tests are done to ensure the fuel system is safe from tiny droplets of water freezing and blocking flow of fuel to the engines.