[bdamm]

There's a movement towards industry building standards around how to meet the general requirements that aircraft need to meet.

However, that's a step back from the previous approach, where fundamental architecture concepts are needlessly cooked into the airframe regulations. As a simple example, under the previous approach, the law stated that light sport aircraft needed a reciprocating engine, and that reciprocating engine must meet XYZ standards. However that means you couldn't certify and sell an electric LSA in the United States. To certify such an aircraft would have required literally an act of congress.

Overall, this was generally holding back the industry a great deal. The new rules have been in place for a couple of years now (they came into effect just at the end of the Obama administration) and the result has been an enormous improvement in technology available to certified aircraft owners and designers.

So personally I don't think it is a step backwards. The MCAS/CG issue is unfortunate, but it's also part of an industry-wide adjustment that is in general leading to better airplanes.

[FabHK]

Isn't that issue (the move to performance-based certification) somewhat orthogonal to the issue "privatisation" of certification? How are they related?