The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have agreed on a set of criteria to allow the industry to accept alternate development assurance standards for software and airborne electronic hardware (SW&AEH) certification.
The novelty is outlined in the published reports and is the outcome of the joint EASA/FAA Task Force ‘Abstraction Layer’ (TFAL) established in June 2019. The aim of the Task Force was to identify ways to develop means to assess available standards or publicly available methodologies without compromising the high safety standards of aviation, through the definition of an ‘Abstraction Layer’.
The first report contains a set of 20 criteria for the assessment of the candidate alternate standard, as well as a User Guide describing ‘how to use the Abstraction Layer’.
The second report proposes ‘how to consider the Abstraction Layer within the current regulatory framework of EASA and FAA’ as well as the ‘framework for recognition of alternate standards assessed using the Abstraction Layer’.
