Do it better in a shorter time! Four directions FTE must walk to satisfy this requirement under the spot light of the Flight Safety and Flight Test Independence

Francesco G. Bindi, Leonardo Aircraft Division, Department of “Ground and Flight Test Validation & Verification” (Italy)
Massimo R. Racca, Leonardo Aircraft Division, Department of “Ground and Flight Test Validation & Verification” (Italy)

Abstract

We don't know how the future of the FTE job will look like but we know what the management will ask " Do it better in a shorter time".

Looking back at our twenty-years’ experience at Leonardo Aircraft Division Flight Test, we see an increasing focus on program timescale along the years and a consequent need to improve test requirements definition, flight test conduction and reporting; in the meanwhile, guideline governing flight test process has remained mostly unchanged.

Management requirement could lead both to some shortcuts in the process and to overlap of roles. In this way designer could be encouraged to be deeply involved in the flight test phases in order to catch, as soon as possible, trials results. In this frame to preserve Flight Test Engineering independence in reporting test results (“someone has still to say mama that the baby is ugly”) an efficient use of human resources and the correct allocation of time for designer long term analysis appear necessary. In this doing, the safety aspects, already part of testing process, must be deeply and constantly deployed in all the phases of flight test activities.

FTE world can and has to find a way to satisfy management requests: this paper aims at outlining, on the basis of Leonardo experience, four directions on which significant steps can be done:

o Process: improve the process working on a more efficient collaboration among all the players while maintaining a strong independent role of FT

o Skill: the FT is a peculiar discipline that merge the flight world personal passion with the deep knowledge of aeronautic matters. The dedicated industry path to create the knowledge needs to be reviewed with particular attention to the FT aspects

o Tool: current technology allows to deeply improve the test analysis tools for a more efficient flight test reporting. However, the use of state of the art tool need to travel with the capability to recognise the physical phenomena and any deviation from the expected behaviour.

o Safety: in a world in which constraints are a factor, all the improvement steps have to be walked under the spot light of the Flight Safety, the integration of Safety Management System concepts in the Flight Test Risk management process is the way to follow.