Despite this engineering review (or perhaps because of it), air carriers have been adopting PMA usage in their fleets and recognizing reliability improvements and cost savings.
During the 1990s, the three men were members of the FAA Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee (ARAC) Part 21 Working Group, which was charged with developing updated manufacturing regulations.
On May 18, 1998 they held a "MARPA Kick-off Meeting" at Fado Irish Pub on 7th St. in Washington, DC and signed, on a restaurant placemat, an agreement to form such a trade association.
The association spent its early years in the Phoenix, Arizona, area under the guidance of George Powell and his wife Gloria Nations.
[9] MARPA works with government agencies, like the FAA and EASA, to help promote aircraft parts safety.
MARPA also works with the government agencies to help promote reasonable standards of commercial fairness in the industry.
[14][15] The MARPA COS guidance represents a voluntary system under which PMA manufacturers track their parts through their entire life cycle in order to be able to collect reliability data.
[17] MARPA has been recognized as a trade association committed to helping PMA companies to comply with FAA and other regulations.
[18] MARPA joined with the Air Transport Association in a letter to CFM International, asking them to rescind a series of advertisements that made unsupported claims.
[23] It also educates the PMA community about the changing standards that apply to them through their website, a monthly newsletter, a blog, and an Annual Conference.
[28] The Conference generally features significant participation by the FAA and other government entities (like EASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. International Trade Administration, U.S. Justice Department, etc.
The purpose of the panel was to explore the safety paradigms that could be introduced to address the relationships between the aftermarket and the OEM market.