Following the emergency grounding of the Dassault Falcon 7X fleet on 26 May, the European Aviation Safety Agency on 30 May issued a flight condition approval sheet allowing owners to conduct ferry flights to base maintenance stations, according to the manufacturer.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued an equivalent approval for US-registered aircraft on 31 May. Dassault says that "several aircraft have been ferried back to their home base since".
Dassault's investigation has confirmed that, in the incident on 25 May that sparked the original EASA emergency airworthiness directive, the Falcon 7X's control laws operated normally, which has allowed the development of a safe ferry procedure using the aircraft's digital flight control system in "normal" mode. The aircraft landed safely.
The manufacturer said: "The on-site investigation of the aircraft that experienced the [pitch trim] anomaly is complete, but it did not reveal the root cause. Further analysis of the trim control equipment from that aircraft will be conducted at Dassault Aviation laboratories starting today."
Source: Flight International
