Just received the following from Ed Block, who is one of the main wiring experts that has been exposing the risks of Kapton. Makes pretty chilling reading!
There has been a real war raging as of late with the FAA and I. After the two and a half years of inspecting aircraft, there was no question as to there being a major problem with the fleet's wiring. It was also determined that visual inspections were inadequate in discerning the most serious wire flaws (cracks). I thought that the war was over. The FAA told me in Jan 01 they
would be developing wire performance standards to alleviate the chance of any
future poor selections of wire.
Instead, the ATSRAC has just approved sending the development of wire performance testing to R&D for 3 more years. They are saying in effect that it is the installation, and not insulation. They are essentially saying if we
could keep those pesky mechanics off the aircraft, the wiring would last forever. This is an attempt to shift responsibility to the operators rather than the OEMs.
I have submitted comments to the ATSRAC Training Group I belong to, and the Head of Certification John Hickey. I have also been interviewed by USA Today and the Associated Press on these issues. This needs to be shouted from the roof tops. The wires going into the 777 (cross-linked Tefzel), are
the smokiest, most toxic, and flammable wires out there. They are as soft as butter at rated temperature. Why are these defective wires still allowed?
There are still no performance tests required by the FAA for wiring, even though they released the Aircraft Materials Fire Test Handbook on 6/1/00 which contained tests for arc tracking, smoke, flammability and toxicity of aircraft wiring (http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/handbook.stm). Please help spread the word that there are more tests for seat-covers than the wiring that ignites fuel vapors, insulation blankets, and generates uncommanded inputs
into autopilots, and onto control surfaces.