Thanks again for your question and for your patience whilst we discussed the subject with the European Commission. Herewith our response based on those discussions and our own information.
To begin with, please find attached, for your information, a link to Commission Regulation (EC) No 29/2009 laying down requirements on data link services for the single European sky (
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conte...X%3A32009R0029) amended by Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2015/310 (
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conte...X%3A32015R0310).
As far as Data Link Services are concerned, the two existing decisions (Commission Decision C(2011) 2611 final of 20.5.2011 on exemptions under Article 14 of Commission Regulation (EC) N° 29/2009 and Commission Implementing Decision C(2011) 9074 final of 9.12.2011 on exemptions under Article 14 of Commission Regulation (EC) N° 29/2009) are still applicable. They are available from the EC website at the following URLs:
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites...009_fin_en.pdf
https://ec.europa.eu/transport/sites...er_29_2009.pdf
A third Decision, that had been planned some time ago, was never adopted.
The EC is currently working on a minor revision of the Data Link Services Regulation to be followed in due time by a revised and consolidated decision on exemptions. For this decision, they will take due account of the retrofit costs for ageing aircraft reaching their end of life as well as a more recent report prepared by EASA (version 1.3, October 2017) on the basis of the EUROCONTROL report of 2013. These updates of the legal framework will most probably be adopted in the coming months.
Regarding your specific question, considering the existing Decisions in force, aircraft of type Cessna C680 are not currently exempted. The first Decision indicated above did exempt this aircraft type but only for a short period of time which is now over. EASA suggest in their report of 2017 mentioned above that aircraft of that type should be exempted with the exception of the Sovereign+ model still in production and equipped with G5000.
The EC confirmed to us that these matters will be examined during the preparation of the third Decision on exemptions indicated above. We believe that the EC intends to publish this in the coming months along with the amendment to the regulation.
In short, although avionic solutions have evolved since 2013, the EC is still considering to exempt specific variants of the C680 for the 3rd decision. In other words, variants that are still under production are not likely to be exempt, older variants are being reviewed.
Hope this helps