GCAA, GACA and Transport Canada Compared

One question set, many answer sheets

Aviation careers cross borders — the CAMO engineer in Cyprus takes a contract in Abu Dhabi, the B1 in Frankfurt gets an offer from Jeddah, the auditor covers a delivery in Montreal. Each move lands in a new rulebook, and the good news of this whole series holds: the reading skill transfers, because every national system answers the same question set. This final guide covers the root that makes it so — ICAO — and three systems an internationally mobile professional meets most after EASA, the FAA and the UK CAA: the UAE's GCAA, Saudi Arabia's GACA, and Transport Canada.

The ICAO root

ICAO publishes the annexes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation. The ICAO Store page for the printed annexes lists 19 annexes. That page says ICAO manages Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) across the 19 Annexes. On that list, Annex 1 is personnel licensing, Annex 6 is operation of aircraft, Annex 8 is airworthiness of aircraft, and Annex 19 is safety management. A national regulation is a state's answer to those annexes — which is why an experienced reader can orient in an unfamiliar rulebook within minutes.

The EU system says this out loud. Among the stated aims of the Basic Regulation:

Every authority in this guide is doing the same job for its own state. What differs is the template each chose for writing the answers down.

United Arab Emirates — GCAA

The issue opened for this page is CAR-145 Approved Maintenance Organisations, Issue 09, published by the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority. The issue history in that PDF refers to CAR M and to CAR 66 (including “Appendix III to CAR 66”). Those are the part labels this page will name.

Resemblance to an EASA part number is not identity. Read Issue 09, not a memory of the EASA text. The Part-66 guide is the European licence, not the UAE one.

Saudi Arabia — GACA

Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation publishes the GACA Regulations (GACARs). This page does not give them part numbers. No dated issue of a GACAR was opened while the page was revised, so a part number here would be a number a reader could not check. The EASA-versus-FAA guide is about those two systems. It is not a map of the GACARs.

Canada — Transport Canada

Transport Canada Civil Aviation maintains the Canadian Aviation Regulations, SOR/96-433 — confusingly also “CARs”. The Justice Laws consolidation opened for this page is current to 2026-09-03 and was last amended on 2026-06-17.

In that consolidation:

• Part IV — Personnel Licensing and Training includes the aircraft maintenance engineer (AME) licence. Section 507.10 refers to an AME licence issued pursuant to Part IV.
• Part V — Airworthiness includes Subpart 71, Aircraft Maintenance Requirements. Section 571.10 requires the standards of airworthiness stated in Standard 571 — Maintenance to have been complied with before a maintenance release is signed. Subpart 73 is Approved Maintenance Organizations. Section 573.02 is the issue of an approved maintenance organization (AMO) certificate. Section 573.01 says the application is made in the form and manner specified in Standard 573 — Approved Maintenance Organizations.
• Part IX — Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems is still in the book.
• Part X — Greenhouse Gas Emissions from International Aviation — CORSIA is also in the book. The consolidation does not stop at Part IX.

Part X was added after Part IX. The amending regulation is SOR/2018-240, Regulations Amending the Canadian Aviation Regulations (Parts I and X — Greenhouse Gas Emissions from International Aviation — CORSIA), registered on 9 November 2018 in the Canada Gazette, Part II, Volume 152, Number 24. Paragraph 2 of that regulation says the regulations are amended by adding the new Part X after Part IX. Paragraph 3 says those regulations come into force on 1 January 2019. The title of the part, in both the amending regulation and the current consolidation, is greenhouse-gas emissions from international aviation under CORSIA.

The template map

Two cautions travel with the table. The acronym “CARs” means different books in Abu Dhabi and Ottawa — name the authority when you cite. And a familiar label is not the text: licences, approvals and privileges are issued under the book you opened, not under the one it reminds you of.

Where to read it yourself

The EASA quote was checked against the Easy Access Rules for the Basic Regulation, 2023-01-16 revision. Article 1(2)(g) in that revision matches the lines above; the point has no applicable-until or applicable-from tag. The other documents named on this page are:

• ICAO Store, Annexes to the Convention on International Civil Aviation — the list of 19 annexes.
• GCAA, CAR-145 Approved Maintenance Organisations, Issue 09.
• Justice Laws, Canadian Aviation Regulations, SOR/96-433, consolidation current to 2026-09-03.
• Canada Gazette, Part II, SOR/2018-240, 9 November 2018.

No GACAR issue is linked, because none was opened. For the reading method, start where this series starts: how to read aviation regulations.