Yes. Once an aircraft comes out of the final assembly line it is handed over to the manufacturer’s production test flight team where it will undergo some required testing. This involves ground checks where the aircraft is ‘woken’ up and the major systems of the aircraft such as the engines, air conditioning, hydraulics etc put on their paces before the aircraft takes its maiden flight.
Once ready for the flight, the production test pilots and the flight test engineers will do their checks and fill up the aircraft technical log for the very first time and take the aircraft for its first flight. During this flight, a pre-planned profile is flown to test the aircraft to ensure that every thing works as it should. This testing is not as intensive as initial test flights as an aircraft to reach this stage would already have a Type certificate (TC) issued by the respective authority. Then comes the customer acceptance part. Here a customer pilot will fly the aircraft with a production test pilot and fly a test profile as in the production test flight. This part gives the assurance to the customer that the aircraft is fit for flight. Once the customer or the airline gives the thumbs up, the aircraft is handed over to to them by the manufacturer and the airline from that point owns the aircraft.
For the certification part, it is not that simple. Most aircraft manufacturers have both an authorization to design and mass produce aircraft. If we take Airbus for example, Airbus has a Design organizational approval (DOA) and a Production organizational approval (POA) from European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). With the DOA, Airbus has the authority to design airplanes and get type certificates for those airplanes. And with the POA, they can produce airplanes while meeting the standards set by the DOA. The DOA basically designs the aircraft within the regulatory standards and gets the Type certificate for the aircraft. It is the DOA that ensures that everything in the aircraft meets the regulatory requirements.
The prototype test flying is also done by the DOA. Once the regulator is happy with the aircraft, the TC is issued and then the POA takes over. The POA usually has a very intensive Quality assurance system which makes sure that each aircraft that comes out of the factory meets the standards of the DOA. This is the reason why production test flights for each individual aircraft is not as intense as the ones done for an initial prototype. The quality system keeps a close watch on any irregularities and makes sure that every aircraft is a carbon copy of one another.
The DOA also ensures that the aircraft type at all times meet the airworthiness requirements to the point where the production of the aircraft is stopped by the manufacturer.
So, what about individual aircraft certification? In most cases, it is the aircraft country of registration that issues the Certification of airworthiness (CoA) to each Manufacturer serial number (MSN). For instance, if I want to fly an aircraft in the country of the Maldives, I will need a CoA for that aircraft from the Civil aviation authority of the Maldives. If the said aircraft is an Airbus A330 that was made brand new in Toulouse, France and if I want to ferry it to the Maldives, I can do it in two main ways. One is I will have to fly inspectors from the CAA of the Maldives to Toulouse so that they can do the required checks and issue the CoA. Then I can simply fly it to the Maldives with no issues. The other way to do this is for EASA to issue what is called an Export Certificate of Airworthiness. This export CoA will give the import country, in our case the Maldives the guarantee that the aircraft in question meets the airworthiness requirements of the Maldives. Then, once it is in the Maldives, a Maldivian CAA CoA will be issued to the aircraft.
Author – Anas Maaz
