Sun, Jun 01, 2008
Allows Manufacturer To Carry Out Certain Certification,
Airworthiness Functions
The Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) recently appointed Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company,
as a holder of an Organization Designation Authorization (ODA). By
FAA rules, ODA may be granted only to organizations who have
demonstrated a high level of competence in carrying out certain
certification, production and airworthiness functions.
Roy Battles, a Bell senior vice president and the company's
Chief Technology Officer in charge of product safety and integrity
stated, "We have been working with the FAA for two years to achieve
this authorization and are confident our procedures are at the
highest level to successfully enable us to perform this significant
responsibility on behalf of the FAA."
The ODA effort at Bell was lead by Battles, and expedited by the
Civil Certification, Engineering, Flight Test and Quality Assurance
departments. The new authorization enables and empowers an ODA
"unit" headquartered at Bell Helicopter Fort Worth to act as a
certification and production/ airworthiness office, performing most
of the necessary approvals on behalf of the FAA, and in accordance
with Bell procedures that have been accepted by that regulatory
agency.
Bell executive officers and senior management have committed the
company to accept the responsibilities that accompany ODA
privileges. Bell may reasonably expect substantial improvements in
certification project efficiency by utilizing the authority granted
to it under ODA.
ODA is the FAA's single construct for advanced organizational
delegation replacing all of FAA's existing delegation mechanisms
(DOA, DAS, ODAR, SFAR36).
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