Flight Test
Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops and gathers data during flight of an aircraft and then analyzes the data to evaluate the flight characteristics of the aircraft and validate its design, including safety aspects. The flight test phase accomplishes two major tasks: 1) finding and fixing any aircraft design problems and then 2) verifying and documenting the aircraft capabilities for government certification or customer acceptance. The flight test phase can range from the test of a single new system for an existing aircraft to the complete development and certification of a new aircraft. Therefore, the duration of a flight test program can vary from a few weeks to many years.
Read more about Flight Test: Civil Aircraft Flight Test, Military Aircraft Flight Test, Flight Test Processes
Famous quotes containing the words flight and/or test:
“Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason’s imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?””
—William Golding (b. 1911)