What Release Documentation is sent with Software installed During Maintenance?
 

Hi All,

The UK CAA, FAA, EASA, Transport Canada have all published requirements for certification of software, For example, some software, considered as Loadable Software Aircraft Parts (LSAP), needs an EASA Form 1, FAA 8130-3, TCA Form One etc. Other software may need a C of C or, as in FMS database upload, a Letter of Acceptance. I write with reference to maintenance.
However, in the corporate maintenance sector in which I'm currently working, there is a tendency to accept software on email or other media from manufacturers' reps, completion centres and others with absolutely no documentation (and maybe some software doesn't need it; FMS uploads can be downloaded from websites since appropriate documentation is referred to there). Further to that, some of the suppliers of this software seem ignorant of what documents they should supply (not just completion centres, OEM reps, too).
I'd appreciate any of your experiences in this regard.

Bus 429
 

I worked corperate avionics for about 6 months out of a 17 year career. I was shocked to see just how loose the industry is run and came to the conclusion that there is less liability. If a corperate jet crashes you loose only a few souls and the FAA just does not care. Suppose the same goes for software, the liability of stolen or corruption of data is very small.

The major operator I work for operates about 400-500 aircraft they have been trying like hell to use wifi (too easy to hack) now 3g cell service to update FMS,EGPWS,EFB's etc. They are having a major struggle in proving that the transfer will be secure, we download a portion of it over the intranet anyways. As goes for certification working corperate you are closer to the supplier, I never talk to honeywell, rockwell reps anymore.

I do not miss reading torn prints that were the only copy that came from the outfitter of a G2, just to find stuff not wired up anything like it was doccumented anyways.

Grounded - fully agree with you. I've worked with commercial heavy aviation most of my career and although it isn't perfect, it's a darn sight better than corporate.

Should have an EASA Form 1 surely? I know some times it is e-mailed to you but in reality should be delivered on disks with a Form 1? I guess individual maintenance organisations have procedures to control this? (well at least they should!).

Good point. I've never seen (nor asked for any actually) any release docs for software. As chance would have it, I did nav updates over the past few days on 3 European airline's passenger aircraft, all software was emailed from the relevant maintenance controls. These airlines are all very good with safety, regulations, etc, but haven't seen any release GRNs for the software.

Actually, forgot that one of them isn't emailed, you log onto their server and download the file

Being a B1 with avionics extention, therfore not knowing much about the black arts, should some unsavoury character get themselves in a postion such that we'd accept software from them, what's the worst that could happen to modern aircraft such as the E170/190, 737NG, a320, etc? I did the Embraer B1 B2 course and seem to recall that a lot of software can be changed on that aircraft.