Part-66 Module 10: Aviation Legislation

The EASA table has ten topics, and they run outward from you to the system you work in. Topic 10.1 is the regulatory framework itself, set at level 1: you need to know which document does what and which body stands behind it, not recite any of it. The next row, 10.2, “Certifying staff: maintenance”, is the heading you personally sit under, and 66.A.3 is where category B1 divides and B1.1 becomes the licence for turbine aeroplanes. What that licence lets you do is set out at 66.A.20(a)(2): issuing certificates of release to service, and acting as B1 support staff, after maintenance on aircraft structure, powerplant and mechanical and electrical systems, along with avionic work that needs only simple tests to prove serviceability and no troubleshooting.

The weight of the module sits in the four topics at level 2, and they describe the machinery around a signature. “Approved maintenance organisations” at 10.3 is the frame most certification happens inside: the organisation holds the approval, and its privileges set what you may sign. Move down to 10.6, “Certification of aircraft, parts and appliances”, and the subject is how a part earns the right to be fitted, instead of staying an identical object with no history behind it. Under both sits 10.7, “Continuing airworthiness”, which is about keeping an aeroplane legal between hangar visits: the records that show what was done, what is due next, and who carries the responsibility for both.

EASA’s 10.4, “Independent certifying staff”, is the module’s only level 3 row, and Appendix I keeps that depth for combining separate pieces of knowledge, not describing them one at a time, so this is the single place in Module 10 where the syllabus asks it of you. It sits a long way above the light familiarity the level 1 rows want, and the UK table has no matching row at any number, so this one belongs to EASA candidates alone.

The remaining rows sit at level 1 and are mostly the newest ground: at 10.5, “Air operations”, you’re looking at the operator’s own rulebook from the hangar floor. “Oversight principles in continuing airworthiness” at 10.8 and “Maintenance and certification beyond the current EU regulations” at 10.9 sit at the edges of the system: the first is how it keeps watch on itself, the second is what happens when the work falls outside European law altogether. “Cybersecurity in aviation maintenance” at 10.10 came in with the 2023 rewrite of Appendix I, and it is a level 1 heading over a real hole: the laptop that carries loadable software out to an aeroplane is a way into that aeroplane, and so is the hangar network it connects to.

Under EASA the whole of Module 10 is the multiple choice paper; under the UK CAA it is that paper plus a written answer, and the written answer draws on the same syllabus rather than anything extra. What changes is what you have to do with the material, not how much of it there is.

EASA sets 44 questions in 55 minutes; the UK CAA sets 40 questions in 50 minutes, then a written question after them. The shorter paper isn’t the lighter one: Module 10 is the one place in the licence where what you’re examined on is a document rather than a machine, and the document isn’t the same on both sides of the Channel, since EASA’s table runs to ten topics and the UK CAA’s to seven.

The pass mark is 75% under both authorities: on the EASA paper that means 33 correct answers with 11 to spare, and on the UK paper 30 correct with 10 in hand. The odd thing about that allowance here is that none of it can be won back at the desk, because you can’t reason out who may issue a certificate of release to service the way you can rebuild a circuit or a formula: a rule has no workings inside it, and it says what it says. The margin you walk in with is very nearly the margin you walk out with, and every answer inside it was settled weeks before the exam.

The written question is a UK thing. Appendix II point 1.4 of the assimilated text draws essay questions from Modules 7A, 7B, 9A, 9B and 10, and a B1.1 candidate sits three of those five papers, which makes Module 10 the last written answer on that route, while EASA candidates write nothing here at all. What the essay rewards is setting a rule out in order, rather than recognising it in a list, and that is a different act of memory from the one the multiple choice half asks for.

From 10.4 down, a shared code is all that a row’s EASA half and its UK half have in common. The two lists keep step as far as 10.3, with ten EASA rows in all against seven UK ones, and below that, every row printing a second title beneath the first has a different subject on each side of it. Those rows aren’t the two texts disagreeing about depth; they are the renumbering showing through, one place at a time, all the way to the foot of the table.

Yes, and further than the paper alone suggests. Both call it Module 10 and both title it Aviation Legislation, and that is nearly all the common ground there is: 44 questions in 55 minutes against 40 in 50 with an essay, over a syllabus that splits more widely still. Module 10 is one of four papers the two texts genuinely set apart, and the only one where the difference is the subject itself: everywhere else the two texts describe one thing in two ways, and here they describe two different authorities.

The renumbering is the thing to get right, because you can’t see it until you look at the titles. EASA’s 10.4 is “Independent certifying staff”, and no UK topic of that name exists at any number: the UK list simply doesn’t contain the subject, so everything below it runs one place behind. The UK’s 10.4 is “Air operations”, which EASA numbers 10.5, the UK’s 10.5 is “Certification of aircraft, parts and appliances”, which EASA numbers 10.6, and the UK’s 10.6 is “Continuing airworthiness”, EASA’s 10.7. Map the two tables number for number and you are wrong from 10.4 onward.

At the bottom the two lists split a second time instead of closing back up: the UK finishes with 10.7, “Applicable national and international requirements”, a heading the EASA table doesn’t carry. EASA finishes with three the UK never adopted: “Oversight principles in continuing airworthiness”, “Maintenance and certification beyond the current EU regulations” and “Cybersecurity in aviation maintenance”. Underneath the numbering, the UK text is the European one as it stood before the UK left, with the CAA and the Secretary of State written in where EASA and the Commission stood, which quietly changes the correct answer to a great many questions about who does what.

None of this is a matter of house style. Elsewhere in the licence the two texts mostly describe the same physical thing in different words, and where a whole subject does change under a shared number, as at Module 7’s 7.4, Module 8’s 8.4, Module 9’s 9.9, Module 11’s 11.2(b) and Module 15’s 15.15, the mismatch stays in that one row and the rest of the table still maps across. Here it isn’t one row: the renumbering runs from 10.4 to the bottom of the list, so each text has to be revised as a subject in its own right and not as a variant of the other.

The wider split between the two authorities is on the EASA versus UK CAA page: mutual recognition, which licence to go for, and what happened to the conversion route.

This page covers one of the 13 papers. The rest of the guide covers the route they sit inside: what the exam is, what else you must have done besides passing it, and how the two authorities differ.

Both authorities require the same thirteen subjects. Only the numbering and some of the titles differ, and the UK still uses the A suffix on four of them where EASA has dropped it. Each has a page of its own.