1. Scope

Keywords

Rationale

This proposed standard would support the new proposed Part 22, applies to multiple types of aircraft and capabilities. The standard covers flight requirements such as those found under “Flight” section in existing ASTM Standard F2245, 14 CFR 23 (prior to amendment 64), Part 25, Part 27 and Part 29, LTF-ULH and EASA CS-VLR Amendment 3 and F2352-14. These were all referenced and evaluated as part of the development of this proposed standard. Compared with previous, common flight standards that are aircraft type specific, this proposed standard orients instead around aircraft capabilities. This makes for a standard that is much more robust to various aircraft types. Similarly, it allows for a single standard that can apply to a wide range of aircraft–from airplanes to helicopters to electric powered aircraft capable of vertical takeoffs. In order to achieve this and make it easier for the industry to develop flight test programs, this standard introduces a concept called Flight Test Elements (FTEs). An FTE provides a test-card like format for a given flight requirement (e.g. takeoff, cruise, climb, or hover) in a standardized format with individualized content for a given aircraft capability. This approach is similar to recent approaches for VTOL and Rotorcraft in documents such as MIL-DTL-32742(AR)-Detail Specification Handling Qualities For Military Rotorcraft and DOT/FAA/TC-23/59-Handling Qualities Test Guide for Powered Lift VTOL Capable Aircraft with Indirect Flight Controls and Operating in Day Time Visual Flight Rules. The key difference with the FTE approach is that FTEs are focused on being as simple as possible and only specify minimum safety requirements and not handling qualities. Overall, this approach should provide a robust platform for development of future aircraft because addressing new aircraft types and capabilities only requires adding/altering FTEs and does not require entirely new standards with significant overlapping content. At this time only a single FTE is included in this ballot item (Normal Landing). A list of the additional FTEs that will be balloted is given below. Note that several of the FTEs are already drafted through the work of the task group over the last year of weekly meetings. The intent is to get the main standard approved with a single FTE. After this is complete then the rest of the FTEs will be balloted as individual Annex additions to the standard. This will help with focusing the balloting effort of each FTE on its own content and keep multiple development threads moving in parallel. If all were balloted at the same time, then one technical issue in one FTE could hold up progress on all of them.