THE CUSTOMER PROBLEM
An Aircraft manufacturer had planned certification and delivery of its new business class (Part 23) twin-jet aircraft. In the several years since the manufacturer had certified a new aircraft, FAA certification requirements had changed significantly. The impact of these changes in time and effort was underestimated, causing the certification date to be missed and preventing delivery into service, with resulting financial consequences.
SeaTec was engaged to support System Safety Analysis (SSA) for the Propulsion system as the customer worked to bring the aircraft certification process back on-track.
THE SEATEC SOLUTION
Aircraft system safety certification expertise was provided to complete portions of the propulsion system SSA, in accordance with the System Functional Hazard Assessment (SFHA), and the Safety Assessment Requirements (SAR).
A highly skilled team consisting of a team lead with deep knowledge in aircraft system safety, project manager, and specialized engineers.
The SeaTec team embedded with the manufacturer’s engineering and leadership team and quickly took on the assessment of a specific portion of propulsion functionality.
The manufacturer team had already developed safety requirements through identification of functional hazards and their severity levels. In addition, the functional failure modes of the system (as determined by the engine supplier) were available to the team. However, the manufacturer team was struggling to complete the system safety assessment, in particular the qualitative write-ups which provide technical substantiation that the system complies with the applicable safety requirements.
The SeaTec team saw that the large number of authors working on the assessment, combined with a complex requirements organization scheme, was impeding progress.
Using available mature content and SeaTec expertise, a set of ‘Gold Standard’ write-ups were established and used to generate content for the System Safety Assessment. These detailed examples were then reviewed with the manufacturer’s certification authorities in order to ensure they were adequate in detail, fidelity, and depth of analysis. The “Gold Standards” were then used to complete the System Safety Assessment and assure that it would be found acceptable to support certification.
THE CUSTOMER BENEFIT
Propulsion SSA Certification achieved – The propulsion SSA received FAA confirmation that it was acceptable to accomplish certification.
Provisional Type Certification for the Aircraft achieved – Enabling operators to begin flight training.
A reusable repeatable process that increases the probability of Certification and documentation shared – The Gold Standard documentation was provided, enabling the customer to reuse it across all aircraft systems (and future programs) to improve the probability of acceptance of all SSA sections for the other aircraft systems.