The European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) has reached an agreement on working with the Indonesian Directorate General of Air Communications (DGAC) to validate airworthiness certification of the IPTN N250.
Following a 12-month audit of DGAC procedures and regulations, the JAA has endorsed the Indonesian system and has agreed to work with authority on a validation certification of the turboprop.
The JAA has already despatched a 20-man team to IPTN's Bandung plant to begin a technical validation of the N250 programme. "Our target is to have DGAC certification by March 1999, after which will come JAA certification, hopefully by mid-year, and Federal Aviation Administration certification by the end of 1999," says IPTN executive vice-president Ilham Habibie.
IPTN is also being assisted by 20 overseas consultants.
Under the agreement, the yet-to-be-built fourth N250 prototype will serve as a full validation vehicle, while the PA2 and the still-to-be-flown PA3 test aircraft will be used to gain credits. First flight of the third prototype has been pushed back to May 1998, while the PA4 is now scheduled to join the programme in October.
A planned US FAA shadow- endorsement effort met delays in 1996 when the FAA instructed the DGAC that it would not accept either the PA2 or the PA3 as validation vehicles.
Source: Flight International
