FAA Type Certification for Drones
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certifies products such as crewed aircrafts and drones that show compliance with the FAA’s airworthiness standards, as well as environmental standards like emissions and noise. Airworthiness refers to design parameters that create reliable, controllable, and safe aircraft. The aircraft, and its subcomponents by extension, must be properly designed, manufactured and meet the regulations and minimum standards prescribed under section 44701(a) to be safe and reliable. Other airworthiness standards are tailored to specific aircraft designs.
FAA type certification approves the design of the aircraft and its component parts. The process includes four phases:
Technical Overview & Certification Basis: The original design is presented to the FAA once mature.
Certification Program: The FAA and the vehicle designer define and agree on ways to demonstrate compliance of the product under the requirements of the Certification Basis.
Compliance Demonstration: The designer demonstrates compliance of the aircraft and all of its components (airframes, systems, engine) with the regulatory requirements. This includes ground and flight testing.
Technical Closure & Type Certification Issue: The vehicle satisfies the technical requirements for compliance, and the FAA closes the investigation. The vehicle designer receives Type Certification for its vehicle.
While this may sound straightforward, it has certainly not been an easy road for drone companies to date. The FAA prioritizes safety and environmental protection and tends to err on the side of caution for the sake of public safety. As such, the first wave of drone companies applying for type certification have spent many years working with the FAA to address their concerns and set the standard for future vehicles seeking FAA approval. Other companies seek exemptions from the FAA for their activity, and currently, there is a major backlog of exemption requests because each petition for exemption takes a significant amount of time and resources to review.
At the moment, type certification for sUAS is primarily conducted at the vehicle level, and as such, there are no specific standards for sUAS motors and ESCs. In other words, as long as the vehicle successfully completes its compliance testing for the FAA, there is no scrutiny over the propulsion system itself. This will likely change as the industry matures (the FAA heavily regulates engines and propellers for crewed vehicles), but it is very difficult to say when those rules will become necessary for UAS.
Vertiq is constantly monitoring the FAA’s requirements, as well as other government directives, to ensure Vertiq’s products are in compliance with the highest standards. We believe that, in the future, propulsion system components will have to demonstrate an increased level of performance and safety features, which Vertiq’s technology is already well-equipped to address.
Learn more about the FAA’s rules and how companies have navigated the Type Certification process below. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have in achieving certification requirements.
