Aerospace Certification & Airworthiness
KTS Capital advises aircraft and equipment developers on certification, airworthiness approval, and regulatory strategy for civil and military programs, manned and unmanned.
What we do
Certification failures are rarely engineering failures. They are failures of planning, of evidence, and of the argument that connects the two.
01
Certification basis, plans, means of compliance, conformity, and the evidence trail that supports a finding — for civil type certificates under Part 23 and Part 25, and for military type certificates and flight releases.
Detail02
The rules rarely fit a novel design exactly, and authorities do not read them alike. We work the exceptions — special conditions, equivalent level of safety findings, exemptions, issue papers — and run the authority engagement on a schedule set by how those processes actually work.
Detail03
Requirements are decomposed from aircraft level to system level to item level, and that structure is what sets DO-178C and DO-254 assurance levels and DO-160 environmental categories. We manage that chain under ARP4754B guidance, so qualification requirements are derived from the design rather than arbitrarily selected.
Detail04
We perform the ARP4761A safety assessment process end to end — aircraft and system hazard assessment, preliminary and final safety assessments, fault tree analysis, and the safety program planning behind them. That work sets failure condition severity and derives the FDALs and IDALs the rest of the program builds to.
DetailEngagements range from consultation on a single certification plan to sustained, program-level regulatory leadership. Most begin with a short scoping conversation and a written assessment of where your program stands.
Start a conversationThe discipline
Compliance is not testing, and it is not documentation. It is a traceable line from a requirement to the method chosen to satisfy it, to the evidence produced, to a closure that survives review.
Every showing starts by knowing exactly which requirement is being addressed. Work that is not anchored to a requirement can be excellent and still close nothing.
Analysis, test, inspection, similarity, simulation, or design review. Each carries a different burden of proof, and the method has to fit the requirement it serves.
Not raw data — a structured package: the work, the assumptions behind it, the result, and the reasoning that ties the result back to the requirement.
A requirement is closed when the evidence is complete, the method was appropriate, the link is unambiguous, and the package can withstand review. Not before.
Track record
Experience earned on programs that had to fly.
Ten years of certification and airworthiness work across manned and unmanned air systems, civil and military applications, fly-by-wire and conventional flight controls, under both Part 23 and Part 25. That work has been conducted with civil and military airworthiness authorities in the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada, and has carried programs to type certificates, supplemental certificates, and military flight releases.
10
Years in aircraft certification and airworthiness
7
Civil and military airworthiness authorities engaged across four countries
8
Classes of certificate and flight authorization supported
We support programs at every phase, from concept through certification and in-service design changes.