Originally published at: Duffy Calls for Faster Aircraft Certification
Transportation secretary cites lengthy approval timelines and international competition.
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I’m all for certification reform if it can be done safely but using China as motivation is completely false and misleading. They have never certified an airliner that has achieved commercial success and continue to rely on Western products.
Well, let’s start with number and skill level of FAA staff - inexperience and quantity was identified as a problem with B737MAX and B787.
While not excusing developers like Boeing who didn’t follow their own change evaluation procedure when morphing a feature of the B737MAX (and before that point no clear experienced head gave leadership).
I don’t know why Bombardier was so late with the C-series airliner, probably same reasons including butthead jurks.
Making it clearer - there are buttheads in regulatory authorities and in applicants.
I’ve encountered them in FAA and TC. One MIDO inspector refused to follow HQ direction on flight test permits for avionics systems, he’d been among the FAA persons sued when a prototype airplane on cross-country trip to OSH did not arrive. Decades earlier TC people were tight after a DC-8 came out of the air.
There’ll be enough cases of professional disagreement - B707s for British operation had to have a stick nudger, B737s could not be switched between Britain and Canada seasonally.
Re: Experienced Engineering Personal:
We used to say, “Those that can, do. Those that can’t do, teach. Those that can’t teach, work in the FAA Program Office.”
I remember many times when applying for an STC on Part 25 category aircraft, where I had to explain (in depth) the most basic of avionics systems being applied to an airframe.
One instance sticks particularly in my mind was an STC amplification for a SELCAL decoder, where I had to stress that the decoder did not transmit, had no receiver, and that it only responded to a received tonal code. The engineer to whom I was teaching school still couldn’t get the concept.
I finally made him understand by putting forth the allegory of several people in the same room having belt beepers (yes, this was some time ago) and only one going off. Unfortunately, this was not an uncommon instance.
The FAA does need highly qualified personnel, but I’m sure that being a government employee with the pay structure and chances for advancement do not draw the cream of the crop.
Good luck to Mr. Duffy and his staff. I hope that this effort is not just a rearrangement of the Titanic’s deck chairs as has been the case so many times before when the FAA has attempted to improve the flow of approvals through the various regions.
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