Part 23/25/27/29 Avionics Civil Certifications

The Part 23/25/27/29 in the title of this section refers to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and European Aviation Safety Administration (EASA) (formerly Joint Aviation Administration) definitions of aircraft types. Part 23 aircraft are defined as normal, utility, acrobatic, and commuter category airplanes; Part 25 defines transport category airplanes. The discussions in this section are applicable to Part 27 (utility helicopters) and Part 29 (transport helicopters) as well as military installations. The systems in this section have, for the most part, been developed for the general and commercial aviation market or mandated for use by the state authorities. Since the emphasis will be on compliance with the applicable certification requirements, some time will be spent on the civil certification process, its history, and a review of the types of documents that you will need to reference. The discussion will continue with hardware, software, and safety considerations and the requirements for each. Controls and displays and human factors, which are considerations for all test plans, will be discussed in detail and documents to assist in the test planning process will be identified. The systems that will be covered include weather RADAR, global satellite based navigation civil certifications, reduced vertical separation minima (RVSM), terrain awareness warning systems (TAWS), traffic alert and collision avoidance systems (TCAS), flight management systems (FMS), landing systems, autopilots, and integrated navigation systems. Suggested reading and reference material are numerous and will be called out in each of the sections.