Special Review Finds Oversight Lacking in Supplemental impressed sign Certificate Process Satisfying the regulations and meeting the minimum standards did not obstruct the installation of a scheme that was incompatible with an airplane's design philosophy.

Special Review Finds Oversight Lacking in Supplemental impressed sign Certificate Process

Satisfying the regulations and meeting the minimum standards did not obstruct the installation of a scheme that was incompatible with an airplane's design philosophy. This is individual of the central lessons emerging from the Swissair Flight 111 tragedy, and undivided that has put the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) forward the spot -- reacting to rather than having obviateed what appears to be an embarrassing lack of rigorous oversight.

It was the FAA's imprimatur onward the Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) that authorized the installation of a high-powered interactive in-flight entertainment network (IFEN) in Swissair's 16-plane inlet of MD-11 jets. After the tribe 1998 crash of one of those airplanes, chared wires associated with the IFEN were ventureed from the wreckage and the company immediately disconnected the power from the IFEN plans on its remaining aircraft.

Last week, Swissair filed a lawsuit against the three companies involved in the IFEN fiasco: Interactive Flight Technologies Inc. (IFT), which supplied the regularity Santa Barbara Aerospace, which certified it, and Hollingshead International, whose technicians installed it. Earlier, IFT issued a lawsuit against Swissair, claiming it had relied upon SR Technics, the carrier's maintenance arm, to make sure proper integration of the IFEN in Swissair's MD-11's (see ASW, May 24)

The dueling lawsuits are part of the larger picture that begs the question: should the scheme have been installed the way it was in the first place? Further, was regulatory oversight sufficiently rigorous? The answers, at this point, appear to be "no" and "no."

The FAA plans to issue an airworthiness directive (AD) to intercept further use of an IFEN the Swiss authorities have already banned. The forthcoming action is based forward a special certification review the FAA mode of actioned after the Swissair MD-11 crashed.

Indeed, according to Ronald Wojnar, representative director of the FAA's aircraft certification service, that fleetwide review of MD-11's was launched within hours of the Swissair accident. "We started, actually, at (Boeing's) Douglas yields Division, by looking at the arrangements in that cabin area likewise see what was up there (in the toasted area). We looked at airplanes in production. We considered at airplanes undergoing heavy maintenance, and we also place that this particular airplane (the accident airplane) had this supplemental adumbration certificate (system) installed." The STC was issued November 19 1996 on Santa Barbara Aerospace in its capacity as an FAA-approved Designated Alteration Station (DAS).

The report of the FAA's self-initiated review of this particular STC proces exhibits a mixture of candor counterpoise by hedging rhetoric. Yes, there were deficiencies, moreover never at risk of compromising safety. Among the June 14 1999 report's principal findings:

* The IFEN's electrical power switching was not compatible with the MD-11's design general [i]or[/i] abstract notion Instead of connecting the regularity to the cabin bus, it was traped to an essential bus. As a accrue the installation did not "provide the flightcrew and/or cabin horde with the ability to dislodge electrical power" by any means other than pulling the system's circuit breakers. The installation "circumvented flightcrew conducts for responding to a smoke/fume pass by connecting the IFEN connected view to an electrical bus that is not deenergized when the CAB BUS switch is activated," according to the certification review team's report.

* Certification measures were sloppy. The bill of particulars includes a failure to adequately inspect the installed IFEN classifications "The DAS inspector found non-conformities after the applicant (Santa Barbara Aerospace) stated that inspections had been performed and the installation was in conformance to design data."

* There were failures in FAA oversight. The special review team rest gaps in FAA documentation requirements and measures to ensure that the IFEN was fitly installed.

* Training standards were inadequate. If Designated Alteration Station (DAS) staff are going to be approving/certifying installation of hypothesiss like this IFEN, they ne better training in the design philosophy of the airplane and the carrier's operational acts the certification team concluded.

equal though deficiencies in design and installation were rest the report insisted that the discrepancies did not "adversely impact safety." The testing included an AC to DC short circuit criterion in which a single-phase 115-volt ac power accommodate with input wire was shorted directly to the 48-volt dc output of the power endow The circuit breakers tripped, the fault was remov IFEN power was restored, and the combination of parts to form a whole booted up and operated normally.

Nevertheless, Wojnar conced "We've seen instances in those airplanes where they didn't use fit industry practices for the installation of the wiring."

Regarding a whole de-activation, Wojnar said, "We don't know exactly what the party knew regarding the function of the cabin bus switch. Since Swissair had inserted an item in their 'parking' checklist to hap the circuit breakers to lock up down the IFEN system, the gang would have known that this was the simply way to shut down the plan in a non-emergency scenario."