Text fwd: S. Korea To Establish Plane Airworthiness System

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=3976729&c=ASI&s=AIR
S. Korea To Establish Plane Airworthiness System
By JUNG SUNG-KI
Published: 5 Mar 17:57 EST (22:57 GMT)

SEOUL - South Korea will provide airworthiness certificates to its military aircraft starting this summer to ensure their flight safety and help facilitate the export of its indigenous military airplanes, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) here said March 5.

The move followed the National Assembly's endorsement March 3 of a bill to establish an airworthiness certification system of its own for military aircraft, the agency said in a news release. The relevant law will take effect Aug. 1 after getting approval from the president and a DAPA-affiliated committee of airplane experts and technicians is formed, it said.

The government plans to apply the system first when it delivers KT-1 Woongbi basic trainer planes to Turkey in the coming years, according to the release.

"The introduction of the airworthiness system for military aircraft will help ensure flight safety for the military aircraft business, which accounts for more than 80 percent of the country's aircraft industry," the release stated. "In addition, the export competitiveness of the indigenous KT-1T and T-50 trainers will be improved to a great extent because of the system meeting international standards."

KT-1T refers to an export version of the trainer for Turkey. Under a 2007 deal valued at some $500 million, Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) plans to develop KT-1Ts equipped with advanced avionics by the end of the year and deliver 55 of them in stages by 2013.

Under the envisioned system, the committee will monitor, inspect and evaluate procedures related to domestic military aircraft design, production and maintenance to check whether the planes are worthy of safe flight and their specifications meet international standards, Lt. Col. Koh Shim-jae said at DAPA's analysis and test trial bureau.

Previously, South Korea had to pay foreign airworthiness agencies to evaluate its military aircraft and wait for certificates, Koh said.

"We don't need to provide our aircraft development data and other detailed information to foreign agencies for the airworthiness certification, which will prevent our relevant technologies from being leaked," he said. "The domestic airworthiness mechanism will not only help reduce the cost and time for selling our military aircraft, but also gain customers' trust in aircraft technology."

Only seven or eight nations, including the U.S., United Kingdom, France, Canada and other NATO member states, have their own airworthiness certification system in place, he added.