A400M Delayed by Paperwork Blunder 
Airbus A400M engine maker Europrop International has admitted it blundered in the development of a vital computer system by failing to produce the correct paperwork to allow the power plant to be certified to the required civil standards.
EPI president Nick Durham said the company only realized last year that the paper trail required for the full authority digital engine control (FADEC) was OK for military approval but not the civil requirements agreed to in the contract with Airbus. "The problem came from having to demonstrate to the European Aviation Safety Authority traceability through the development cycles. When we sat down with them late summer last year, it was clear to us and them that actually, whilst everything worked, we couldn't clearly show that," Durham said.
Durham attributed the error to "the pressure of the moment." "We didn't intentionally go down this route. The organizations involved in normal military programs work in a slightly different way to validate the software by operation and I think what happened was people kept to those processes under the pressure rather than move to the civil certification processes we had agreed to. It's a matter of what you do up front and what you do later," he said...........
Talking to reporters in Seville, the EPI boss said the company had to virtually develop from scratch the complex software required to control the aircraft's propulsion system. Durham said EASA is scheduled to do a formal audit on the software system this summer with full engine certification targeted for late 2009.......
Durham said EPI had had to draft in a lot of the best people from across the European partners to resolve the problem, causing other development programs to be "sacrificed." The FADEC workforce had been "more than trebled" to over 200 engineers, he said. The EPI boss said that at the time of the decision not to proceed with the flight test program, the FADEC system was functional, had the required paper trail for military approval, and had operated for over 2,000 hours on the engine-test bed.
Asked why, in light of the fact the A400M program was already facing delays, the decision had not been taken to develop the traceable software in parallel with the flight test program and grant a waiver for the military-approved system to be used, Durham said he wasn't the right person to say. "We had to come through with a traceable engine sooner or later and to demonstrate we had it right and give the customer [Airbus] confidence we had it right. Working with the customer we decided this was the best solution," Durham said.
In a statement, Airbus said the lack of certification of the FADEC, as required by EASA, meant they were not in a position to perform first or subsequent flights. "There is first a civil certification through EASA, and then a "military certification and qualification" which is for the more military specific aspects of the power-plant - airframe combination and utilization such as resistance to gravel and bullets.
EASA grants the stamp for first flight as A400M MSN1 [a test aircraft] will be operated under civil registration. Before granting it, EASA wants to have the assurance that it is safe for the airframe/engine combination to take-off. In the case of the FADEC software, which is complex integrated software, the minimum assurance is to show compliance to DO178B certification process and as a first step, demonstrate traceability of top level requirements in the software development process," said the statement...........
Durham said that despite the FADEC setbacks the 2,600 hours of running on test rigs and 25 hours on the flying test bed showed good results. About 90 percent of development testing is now complete and work is now underway to complete installation of instrumentation on the test engines for MSN1 with the aim of starting ground running tests this summer.
A Hercules C-130 flying test bed operated by British company Marshall Aerospace has been operating with a TP400 replacing one of the four engines since late last year. The engine has operated at 70 percent of take-off power and will shortly move to takeoff at full power, said Durham.
"Engine performance and weight results pretty much meet our wildest dreams. At take-off and cruise we are meeting maximum temperature margins, fuel consumption is at specification and in-flight restarts are working," he said.
Although A400M is known to be heavily overweight, Durham said the engine weight is within 1 percent of specification.
"That's pretty unusual at this stage of engine development. If the performance we have seen so far is backed up on the flight test program, it is so good it suggests we will be able to take out a bit more weight with modifications in the future."