The long winding road to aircraft certification is littered with potholes, road kill, and a smattering of success stories. It's a mind-bending exercise in survival, determination, and passion. It's a blizzard of paperwork and a rainstorm of ink. But a destination is one thing type certification is not. It's only the beginning of a long thoroughfare that takes unexpected turns up peaks and down valleys.
This is a story about two young aircraft companies that feature two product lines (and are trying to create more), have roots in the uncertified homebuilt arena, and are using innovative techniques to bring new levels of safety and efficiency to production aircraft. The highly regulated world that they operate in is a place where profit margins are tight and one small design flaw can cost millions of dollars or render a project commercially unsuccessful.
What happens when you try to raise the bar above the industry standard? And what does the future hold as the FAA goes through a slow cultural transformation in how it deals with the public?
General aviation: This is your life.
Blame game
Stu Horn sits in his smoke-filled office at the Aviat Aircraft factory in Afton, Wyoming, talking on speakerphone. The sky outside his window on this late-October day is gray and cold, and the stationary front over the mountains brings snow flurries. He is trying to clarify something in the muddy rules so that the company knows what to do when it comes across it in the future. At one point he is told by an FAA official that he "asks too many questions." As president and owner of the company, Horn views this as a minor bump in the road and lights up another cigarette.
"Let's get the rules straight, then we'll play the game," Horn says. He goes on to describe the process as a big field where, as you walk toward a beautiful sunset, you occasionally step in a cow patty.
It wasn't by accident that these cow patties ended up in the field; it was because of accidents. The stilted language of the aircraft certification regulations has its roots in the 1920s when government officials started writing regulations in reaction to crashes, known as the "tombstone mentality." This is similar to placing stoplights at intersections where people get killed.
Even at the FAA, different people interpret the rules differently, and sometimes the same person may change his or her mind over time or combine regulations to arrive at an original interpretation. Manufacturers report that the level of discussion can be much higher than the technology they are trying to certify. Although the manufacturers, the government, and the public all have the same interest — safe airplanes — it doesn't always seem that way on the surface. All parties agree that it doesn't do anybody any good to have an engine fall off in a schoolyard. Problems arise in the details about trying to prevent such calamities. As FAA officials point out, most manufacturers far exceed regulatory requirements anyway in the name of safety. Aviat, for instance, dove the Monocoupe Special 110 airplane — that didn't end up making it into production — to 260 knots with no flutter while FAA test pilots took it to the V NE of 191 kt.
"I think this is the hardest business in the world. It is so hard to do right. Small mistakes can kill people," says Paul Fiduccia, president of the Small Aircraft Manufacturers Association (SAMA).
Big bucks
For those who do succeed, the difficulty of certifying an airplane can be an asset, forming a lid over the competition. Alan Klapmeier, president and CEO of Cirrus Design Corporation, describes it as a barrier to entry that prevents, if you will, people from having a lemonade stand on every corner. A type certificate also lends instant credibility. "Difficult? Yes. Rigorous? I hope so," he says.
The name of the game for manufacturers is showing compliance with the rules through validation testing, whether they are certifying airplanes, propellers, or avionics. This costs big money. From the moment a design takes shape on a napkin at a bar, it has a minimum cost figure — any deviation or increase in complexity adds to it. The Beechcraft Starship was a ship of dreams until it sank. Because of a lengthy certification process — and accusations that the FAA waxed conservative on composite construction — the airplane was overweight by a ton, meaning it could not reach its performance expectations. The program cost Beechcraft more than $1 billion and the production line was shut down after completing just 52 aircraft.
As a pioneer in the mass production of composite airplanes, the foundering Starship did help launch other composite dreams such as those held by Cirrus, The Lancair Company, and Diamond Aircraft, but Klapmeier believes what came out of the project was a higher expectation about what kinds of testing composite aircraft might need. For the FAA, composite airframes were a big departure from metal; you can hear the difference once production starts. Composite factories are as quiet as accounting offices while metal factories conjure up images of the war effort during World War II as rivet guns fire .ike machine guns.
Klapmeier thinks the hardest part of the process isn't adhering to the regulations or blazing a new trail, but raising money. It takes several years and millions of dollars to certify a new single-engine airplane in the United States. Small business jets` which require everything from pressurization to bird-ingestion engine tests, take longer and can easily cost $500 million to certify. Costs are felt on both sides of the fence. To certify a medium-complexity business jet requires the FAA to allocate 16,000 man-hours over a five-year period, says Bill Schultz, vice president of engineering and maintenance for the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA). A big chunk of the FAA's funding goes toward airworthiness issues for the existing fleet of aircraft, especially air carriers. Only a small percentage of funding and employees are dedicated for new aircraft certification.
Brain drain
Back in the 1970s Cessna Aircraft Company would come out with a new piston aircraft almost on an annual basis. There was a lot of knowledge floating around in the heads of people working in the company's Wichita plants. Engineers working with slide rules and drafting paper could design parts that were no heavier than they needed to be, and FAA inspectors could almost eyeball it — once they signed off on one aircraft, it was much easier to approve the next one.
When these people retired, the so-called tribal knowledge went with them. The next generation of private and government engineers accumulated experience during the business-jet boom as production at piston plants dried up. With its 75 years in business, Cessna now represents the master of certification in the business-jet world. It has been known to certify jets ahead of schedule and well within budget. Fiduccia says SAMA was formed largely because of the brain drain caused by retirements to document how to certify small airplanes.
As Horn points out, inexperience might cause each person in the process to err on the side of caution, adding, for example, a little bit more material to the part than necessary. By the end, you have a heavy airplane that may fully comply with the FAA regs, but won't perform well, and, for that matter, won't sell.
Streamlining
In the past it wasn't unheard of for a would-be aircraft company to build an airplane, fly it, work out all the bugs, then approach the FAA only to find out that the years of work and millions of dollars spent amounted to numerous regulation compliance issues. Even if the FAA was involved in the project beforehand through the filing of a type certificate application, there were likely to be problems.
As Mike Gallagher, manager of the FAA's Small Airplane Directorate, points out, deadlines would start to slip, except for the type certification date that had already been heavily publicized in the aviation media. Pretty soon the Aircraft Certification Office would get a truckload of paperwork with the company expecting immediate action. In the late 1990s the FAA, aircraft companies, and trade groups started meeting about ways to improve the process.
What evolved is the Certification Process Improvement (CPI) program. Simply put, it involves talking to the FAA as early as possible in the process and working out any issues long before the filing of a type certificate application. The Boeing 757-300 was certified this way while more than 20 other companies are also going through the process. The FAA sees CPI as the way of the future.
Both manufacturers and the FAA had incentives to improve the process rather than allow it to break down into an adversarial relationship as in the past. The FAA only has so many hours in the workday and companies don't want to go bankrupt before leaving the ground. Under CPI, manufacturers also have wider leeway to hire third-party designees who work for the private sector but put on a different hat and serve on behalf of the FAA when making airframe, engine, and avionics conformity inspections. This eases the FAA's workload and allows the agency to focus more on critical safety functions.
Expanding along these lines, Schultz says there is another move afoot, called "approved design organization," that would mark a major step forward in the certification world. Since the FAA is not likely to increase its engineering staff, there has been support for further broadening what private companies can do. Such an idea would have to be written into federal law so that companies would have an almost mini-FAA within them. The FAA would watch over the companies through auditing, similar to the way it oversees repair stations. A company that fails to meet the standards would lose its authority.
The need for changing the system has gotten some attention on Capitol Hill recently. In November the Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry issued a 300-page examination of the status of America's aerospace industry from GA to space flight. In addition to calling for more airports and runways, the congressionally established commission recommended that by certifying the manufacturer's process, rather than each product separately, companies could bring new technology to market faster. But with the national focus on security, Schultz believes any such legislation could be years away.
"We are hopeful that, coming from such a prestigious panel reporting directly to the White House, the commission's findings will prompt both the administration and Congress to act on these crucial issues," says AOPA President Phil Boyer.
Innovation
The words "this airplane will have a parachute" have always hung heavy over Cirrus employees. The words came from Klapmeier, who didn't care how they did it, just that they did it. Klapmeier's feelings for the emergency parachute run deep, far deeper than the holes they made in the California desert during early testing.
Innovation can be tough and expensive in aviation. New ideas are simply not covered in the regulations and require special treatment. The parachute was jeered by critics, but on October 3 last year, Cirrus was vindicated when SR22 owner Lionel Morrison pulled the chute and landed safely in trees in northern Texas after suffering a severe flight control problem. Klapmeier himself narrowly escaped death in the 1980s when his aircraft collided with another. The pilot in the other aircraft died. While such incidents may give some pilots reason to quit flying, from Klapmeier's accident came an awakening to a greater need for aircraft safety.
To realize what became Klapmeier's $10 million dream, Cirrus did 34 deadweight drop tests where 3,600-pound pallets were pushed out of the back of a C-123. The Ballistic Recovery Systems Inc. (BRS) parachute was tested at speeds up to 170 kt. There were also live-fire tests of the rocket. In the beginning the parachute package was to weigh 32 pounds. By the end of the certification program it weighed more than 50.
While industry critics saw the parachute concept as radical, the FAA allows exceptions or "special conditions" in the regulations, basically to account for future circumstances and innovations that the agency can't predict. The BRS parachute was being used on various ultralight aircraft, but the Cirrus SR20 is a much higher-performance airplane and weighs considerably more. Nevertheless, the FAA saw promise in the parachute combined with enhanced stall characteristics — where cuffs or slight twists in the wings cause it to stall at the wing roots rather than at the wing tips to help prevent spins. The FAA said in certification documents that the parachute "creates incentives and encourages new approaches to compliance that may improve the safety over that offered by the existing light-airplane fleet."
In the factory in Duluth, Minnesota, you get the impression that Cirrus is on to something different. There's a large red box that says "explosives." The rockets themselves had to be tested to make sure they could survive very hot temperatures as well as extremely cold Duluth-like temperatures. They were also tested to make sure they wouldn't go off if somebody dropped them on the factory floor.
Test dummies were put in an aircraft fuselage and it was dropped from a height of 10 and a half feet. Three years of work came down to a couple of tests. The studies showed that occupants should be able to emerge without broken bones. "It's not like pulling over to the side of the road," says Patrick Oaddick, Cirrus vice president of engineering. "This is an event that you'll remember for a lifetime, but at least you'll remember it."
Lightning strikes
This may shock you. The last confirmed civilian Transport category crash that was directly attributed to lightning in the United States occurred in 1967. Much has been learned since that fuel tank explosion. The average commercial airliner gets struck at least once a year, causing little damage. Many GA brushes with lightning are minor and go unreported, but there were enough VFR and IFR accidents for the FAA to make Part 23 amendments in 1969 and 1990. This is one of the more interesting and involved areas of aircraft certification.
While the statistics show that GA pilots should be more afraid of flying into each other or spinning into the ground than being hit with 1.5 million volts and 250,000 amps of electricity, there's a primal fear of lightning. The FAA regs basically say, Thou shall not have arcing and sparking in thy fuel tanks. In addition, every circuit and piece of equipment in certified aircraft that is critical for safe flight and landing must be protected.
Cirrus did its testing at the Frankensteinlike lab of Lightning Technologies Inc. (LTI) where engineers come up with worst-case scenarios. "No two lightning strikes are the same," says LTI senior engineer Ed Rupke. Lightning initially attaches itself to an extremity such as a wing tip or nose. As the airplane flies through the flash, it reattaches itself to the fuselage while the structure serves as the circuit between the regions of opposite polarity. The current travels along the skin and typically exits off the tail. Since most aircraft are made of aluminum, a good conductor, engineers know that the electrical current will remain on the skin as long as there are no gaps in its path. But lightning can blow apart bad conductors such as composites or the energy will travel along the path of least resistance, such as metal equipment, shorting out avionics. Composite aircraft require, if you will, fake skins.
That's what Cirrus designed. The simple option was to cover the entire aircraft in aluminum mesh, but that would have added too much weight. So Cirrus placed strips of the mesh along all the important areas. Before this could begin, the FAA approved a test plan. Then the tests were witnessed by the FAA or an FAA designee. After they were completed, a final report was written and packaged along with the rest of the certification documents. From beginning to end, 150 articles were tested over a two-year period. Besides the composite structure, Cirrus had to protect the rocket-launched parachute system. But since it's mechanically launched, Rupke didn't see any problems shielding it from lightning. It gets more complicated for some of LTI's other clients, including military contractors that have airplanes carrying electronically launched bombs and missiles. Lightning remains an area of science that has not been totally figured out, Rupke says. And as in the tale of Frankenstein, the monster occasionally rears its ugly head.
Who needs paper?
Large volumes of paper go hand in hand with government bureaucracies, but does it have to be that way?
Aviat doesn't think so.
Several years ago Horn realized he had a problem. Aviat uses fabric, metal, and wood to build airplanes and kits for the Eagle biplane in much the same way they've always been constructed — in limited production by skilled craftsmen. If your timing is right during a factory visit, you might see four workers struggling to install a Husky wing.
He lays out the problem like this: Say it takes one person to build 10 airplanes and two people to build 20. What happens when you get an order for the twenty-first airplane? By hiring a third person to build one more airplane the company would lose efficiency, making it more advantageous to limit production. Each Pitts Special that rolls off the assembly line is essentially a one-of-a-kind aircraft when viewed on a microscopic scale. Although all the aircraft fall well within safety limits, craftsmen have to hand fit each part.
Realizing that Aviat wanted to grow, Horn five years ago started studying other industries to look for a better manufacturing process. Since then he $as employed a totally electronic design, manufacturing, and wind-tunnel testing system. What used to be drafting is now known as "modeling," where engineers work with three-dimensional images instead of flat parts on paper Ihat are hard to visualize for the untrained eye. Changes to parts can instantly be made throughout the building rather than redrawing and circulating them on paper.
Workers use a computerized measuring system from Faro Technologies to digitally inspect parts, and it has proven to be much more accurate than the old method of using a micrometer. The digital system brings tolerances to within the thickness of a sheet of paper or less. The system also automatically prepares reports to show conformity measurements for submission to the FAA, something that had to be done by hand in the past. Aviat has already used the technology for Adam Aircraft's A500. Adam needed a lighter weight elevator, so as a subcontractor Aviat designed one made of metal instead of composite. Most important, the projections before Aviat started cutting metal were close to the finished product. This adds a degree of predictability for both the manufacturer and the FAA. Once the first elevator was complete, Horn strapped it to a Husky and flew it to Adam's factory near Denver.
Along with the new process at Aviat is an airplane to go with it. In certification documents the aircraft is known as the Model 4000, but Aviat is considering calling it the Magnum. There are no drawings, per se, for the Model 4000. Instead, there is an electronic controlling engineering data package for submission to the FAA. The airplane is designed as a four-place all-metal sport-utility vehicle of the sky that will come in tricycle and tailwheel configurations. It's a sleek-looking high winger and has huge doors to carry almost anything you'd want on an airplane. Aviat will build three conforming test articles, one that will be destroyed in static tests and two that will be flying models so that the company can do simultaneous tests on engine configurations and optional equipment such as floats and skis.
Aviat is looking at offering lightweight titanium landing gear — a system the Russians have perfected — a 200-gallon fuel capacity in the wing for those in the outback who can't easily access fuel, and airbags as standard in a production aircraft. Horn says it didn't take a car wreck on a Wyoming back road to convince him of the value of these new safety devices. What remains to be seen is whether Horn's airbag will send him down the same long road as Klapmeier's parachute.
Now build it
If you look high above the Star Valley in Wyoming you might see a tiny red dot as factory test pilot Mark Heiner wrings out a brand-new Pitts Special S2-C before it goes to a customer. And in Duluth. you might see a happy customer blast off in a Cirrus SR22.
This occurs once the manufacturer survives another big hurdle, earning the production certificate. But first it must show the FAA that it can repeatedly produce the same thing at the same level of quality. With the certificate in hand, manufacturers must think about other factors that allow them to survive and prosper, namely new products. One-hit wonders tend not to survive whereas a family of aircraft breeds stability.
Both Aviat and Cirrus are certifying variations of their existing models: the Aviat Husky Pup, a simplified version of the Husky A1-B with a smaller engine; and a glass-cockpit Cirrus SR22, technology that was previously available only in business jets. They are also heavily focused on launching new aircraft.
What is going on in Afton and Duluth also says something about the spirit and passion for building airplanes and illustrates why manufacturers continue to head down the long road to certification even though they're not sure what odd turns it may take.
Jaddick, whose career at Cirrus began in 1989 when he begged for a job and literally started sweeping floors after finishing engineering school, has come to understand.and relish the challenges of aircraft certification. "Once you get to the end of the road, you realize how much longer the road is," Waddick says.
E-mail the author at [email protected].
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