In accordance with the requirements laid down in Annex VII (Part-ORA) to Commission Regulation (EU) No 1178/20112, pilot training organisations need to set up and maintain a management system, including compliance monitoring, and a safety management system. The overall organisation, its processes, procedures and activities need to be set out in detailed documentation (manuals).

Annex VII (Part-ORA) constitutes an appropriate legal framework for certifying organisations providing training for the purpose of obtaining commercial pilot licences. However, the requirements laid down therein are unnecessarily burdensome and not proportionate for organisations which only provide training for the purpose of obtaining non-commercial pilot licences and specific ratings, privileges and certificates, taking account of the costs incurred, the nature and scale of their activities and the risks and benefits for aviation safety. As noted in the European Aviation Safety Agency's General Aviation Road Map3, a simpler system should therefore be developed for those organisations.

For those reasons, those organisations should be made subject to a set of specific requirements and not be subject to a requirement of prior approval by the competent authority. Instead, they should be allowed to declare to the competent authority that they comply with those requirements applicable to them.

The specific requirements for such declared training organisations (DTOs) should include simplified safety procedures so as to take account of both the lower risk environment in which non-commercial pilots operate and the need for competent authorities to exercise appropriate oversight. In the interest of safety, rules on the submission of training programmes to the competent authority together with the declaration, record keeping, compliance monitoring through an annual internal review, and the appointment of DTO representatives in charge of safety policy, should also be provided for.

For the same reasons, the rules on the oversight and enforcement in respect of DTOs by the competent authorities, laid down in Annex VI (Part-ARA) to Regulation (EU) No 1178/2011, should be amended as well, so as to ensure that they are proportionate, sufficiently flexible, founded on a risk-based approach and consistent with the specific requirements for DTOs.

It is appropriate to also amend certain other provisions of Regulation (EU) No 1178/2011 on pilot training organisations, in particular to provide clarification, delete transitional provisions which are no longer relevant and amend Annex I (Part-FCL) to that Regulation so that it refers to both approved and declared training organisations.

Additional time should be provided for the implementation of the measures on upset prevention and recovery training.

In accordance with Article 19(1) of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008, the European Aviation Safety Agency submitted draft implementing rules to the Commission in Opinion No 11/2016.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee established by Article 65 of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008,