Industry Guidance to Address Common Mode Errors in Aircraft/ System Designs
AIR7126
To develop an industry consensus document describing what Common Mode Errors (CME) are with respect to aircraft/system designs, definitions of commonly used terminology, methods to address CME, practical guidance to decide how much detail is appropriate to analyze CME (reasonable chance of happening or hypothetical), and how to determine when mitigations are sufficient. Includes development up to and including type certification. This AIR will address the questions listed in conclusions and recommendations, section 7, of the white paper (Issues Around Current Understanding of Common Mode Errors).
Rationale: A sub-committee was formed by the S-18 committee to better understand industry concerns with common mode errors. This sub-committee sent out a survey to committee members and the results are documented in a white paper (Issues Around Current Understanding of Common Mode Errors). From the survey results, it can be concluded that there is no industry consensus approach to addressing Common Mode Errors, nor is there sufficient guidance provided for what common mode errors should be addressed, how they should be addressed and to what extent they should be addressed. Additionally, there is no accepted industry wide definition of some of the terms used when discussing methods to address Common Mode Errors. Such terms can have very different meanings, depending on your experiences, and the extent to which they should be applied, if at all, vary greatly across all levels of the industry. This lack of harmonization can be seen in the survey results to exist within and between organizations at all levels including system suppliers, platform manufacturers and certification authorities, in addition to aircraft, system, and item levels resulting in additional risk and resource demands.
