61T Certification Basis
Good basic question, Eric, and one which all the OEM's face from time to time. This typically occurs in sales to foreign operators/governments. The OEM sells a machine that a customer wants, but the machine has some equipment not in the basic military or civil qualified version. How does the OEM certify the machine?
SA finally took the following approach to this thorny issue in the early ?1990's as I recall. They already had an advisory group called a Quality Assurance Board, and they handed the responsibility to them. That Board established a simple guideline: if the buying country had qualification standards, then they would apply. If it was a straight military version machine, then the original US Military standards would apply. In the cases not covered above, FAA standard would apply.
Example: The Government of Brunei wanted a VIP S-70 version ( simple so far: the US Mil. qual applied to the basic airframe and basic systems ), but they needed a fully coupled autopilot. Oops, SA didn't have one. Well, it was about time we designed and put one in the S-70, so we did, and tested it, and put it through a qual program that met each and every requirement of the Part 29 Advisory Circular 29.2C, all the hardcovers, failure mode testing.
I'm not familiar with the details of the 61T, but unless they changed the way they do business, I'd assume something along this approach was done.
Very good question. ( those with some experience working for the OEM can appreciate that some QAB meetings deal with challenging and sometimes contradictory qual issues ).