Overall length sets the category; fuselage width can push it up one. Movement counts can pull it down one — but the standard discourages using that.
The category comes from overall length. Fuselage width is then checked against a maximum for that category, and if it exceeds it the category goes up by one. That second step is routinely missed, and it is the difference between a compliant declaration and an under-declared one.
Where movements of the highest-category aeroplane fall below 700 in the busiest consecutive three months, protection may drop one category. That is a Standard. But the next provision recommends providing the full category anyway, and a further provision forbids dropping below what a higher-category aeroplane needs during any period it is actually planned to operate.
Read together, the remission is a floor for genuinely low-traffic aerodromes. It is not a design target, and treating it as one is how an aerodrome ends up under-protected on the one day it matters.
The objective is three minutes to any point of each operational runway in optimum conditions, two minutes recommended. Agent quantities are the means; response time is the end. An aerodrome carrying the right foam that cannot reach the far threshold in time has met the table and missed the point.
Every figure on this page is cited to the paragraph it comes from. Where a value is a Recommendation rather than a Standard, the row says so. Verified against ICAO Annex 14 Volume I, with EASA CS-ADR-DSN and two national transpositions used as cross-checks.
Deciding which standard applies to your operation is the job. That is what the programme covers.
See the programmesThe full introduction to aerodrome compliance and certification — how the curriculum is structured, what certification is actually for, and how these decisions get made in practice. No card, no call.
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