In December 2014, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev instructed JSC "UAC" together with the State Corporation "Rostech" to focus on the issues of elimination of technological backwardness of the industry, improving the productivity and competitiveness of domestic aircraft and expanding their lineup with projected market demand. It is necessary to work on the formation of scientific and technical groundwork to create a new generation of aircraft with qualitatively better technical and operational characteristics.

The effective way to solve the tasks set can be the introduction of the Design Assurance System (DAS), a system process aimed at reducing the percentage of failures and anomalies in the execution of aviation and space programs associated with errors and failures in the development process, in Russian airlines and corporations.

What is the DAS? It is a system that performs an independent control function at the design stage. The matter is that in the course of designing there is no beforehand prepared effective set of templates, technical specifications and other final documentation on which conformity of independent control service, such as Quality Management System (QMS), in production, constructed on the basis of standards of Quality Management System (QMS), could accept or reject results of designing.

To this date, DAS have been implemented by all the world's developers of aviation and space equipment, including China, India and Brazil, with the exception of Russia. The reason for the introduction of DAS in foreign companies was the results of the analysis, which showed a significant impact on the timing and cost of the life cycle of civil aircraft errors and calculations made at the design stage.

Against the background of a systematic approach to flight safety, the concept of "organizational culture" has emerged and the role of the organization has increased significantly.

Both leading airline companies and certification authorities pay increased attention to the construction and operation of organizations, formation of organizational culture in them.

Industrial companies, by improving the management structure of their organizations and the processes of their operation, ultimately achieve a reduction in time and financial costs associated with the implementation of the requirements of competitive advantages of the aircraft.

Certification authorities, by delegating the control functions of certification of certain aspects of products to the approved organizations of companies, seeking to focus the efforts of their relatively small resources on the certification of the most critical functions of aircraft and systems.

Certification authorities, by delegating the control functions of certification of certain aspects of products to the approved organizations of companies, seeking to focus the efforts of their relatively small resources on the certification of the most critical functions of aircraft and systems.

The new edition of AR-21 reflects the existing situation with the control system, including the requirement: the organization must demonstrate to the Register that it has established and is able to maintain a quality assurance system for aircraft, which ensures continuous control over the development, certification and operation of the aircraft under the scope of the application and its modifications.

However, due to the lack of DAS in Russian companies that develop civil aircraft, AR-21 lacks specific methodological recommendations on independent control system at the design stage.

It is expedient to develop DAS in Russian companies on the basis of well developed European documents.

Detailed recommendations for the construction and operation of the DAS are given in the EASA document "Acceptable Methods of Compliance and Guideline Material («AMC and GM to Part 21»).

The Russian companies do not have any elements of DAS as part of the current procedure for establishing civil aviation equipment.

A distinctive feature of the modern approach to the design of civil aviation aircraft, including their certification, has been the recognition in the last decade of the significant role of the organizational safety factor (SMS Handbook ICAO).

Foreign aviation companies significantly increase their competitiveness, including by improving safety indicators, declared the number one priority in their business activities, due to the consistent introduction of elements of the Safety Management System (SMS), integrating the Quality Management System (QMS), which is usually available in companies.

QMS and SMS complement each other. The QMS focuses on prescriptive instructions and requirements to meet customer expectations and contractual obligations, while the SMS focuses on safety performance. The purpose of the SMS is to identify security-related threats, assess the risks associated with them, and perform effective risk control. By contrast, QMS focuses on the consistent delivery of products and services that meet established requirements.

Russian aviation industry companies in their activities to create new aircraft rely only on QMS, refusing to implement the established in foreign companies DAS. Thus, they not only miss the chance to ensure the level of competitiveness of their products achieved by the world's leading aircraft manufacturers, but also create difficulties for the formation of the world's accepted degree of confidence in the companies of the industry on the part of EASA and FAA. At the same time, in fact, blocking the opportunities of the IAC to move towards the conclusion of a formal bilateral Russia-EU agreement, as provided for by the " Working Agreement in the field of airworthiness between the Interstate aviation committee and the European aviation safety agency".

Russian aircraft industry companies are extremely interested in avoiding duplication of certification work, which leads to significant financial, temporary losses for the creators of aircraft, forced for several years to modify and re-test aircraft in order to bring the standard design to compliance with the requirements of the EASA Certification basis after obtaining a type certificate in the IAC AR.

Thus, for the be-200ES-E amphibious aircraft, this period was 5 years, and the post-certification works stipulated by the conditions of issuing the EASA type certificate could not be completed even 4 years after the validation was completed. And this, despite the fact that using the uniqueness of the aircraft Be-200, periodically it flies the leaders of Russia of the highest rank.

The main strategic direction of the development of civil aviation in the world is to improve safety. In order to successfully enter the market with a new aircraft, the company-developer needs at the stage of developing the concept of the aircraft to lay full compliance, and even exceeding, all international safety requirements. And also to create and maintain a system that allows to produce products (meaning not only the aircraft itself as a product, but also all technical documentation) of a quality that exceeds the products of companies from the United States, Europe, Canada, Brazil.

Russian companies - developers and manufacturers of aircraft, while remain separate from the global aviation industry. This lag in the improvement of organizational schemes creates significant difficulties in obtaining foreign certificates of the Russian aviation equipment and, as a consequence, in the sales of at samples not only to foreign, but also to Russian airlines.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of an "equivalent system of approval of organizations" in Russia, similar to European systems, EASA applies an approach to the validation of Russian aircraft, which is the most expensive and unprofitable for Russian aircraft manufacturers. From the point of view of the level of trust of the world's airlines to the products through the direct involvement in each change, each issued certification document of experts of AR IAC and certification centers with subsequent review of the documents by experts EASA.

When developing and implementing DAS in Russian civil aircraft developers, it is necessary to take into account the long — term experience of the integrated team of Russian and European (Airbus Corporation) specialists who participated in the validation process in EASA of the Be-200ES-E amphibious aircraft, which ended with the receipt of the type Certificate in 2010. Unique is the experience of the team on the development of procedures for the functioning of the registered in Europe, geographically distributed in Russia, France and Ukraine, Russian design organization Beriev Irkut Seaplane (BISP), established in the European Union (Toulouse, France). The developed structure and processes of such an organization have been audited and mainly approved by EASA in the process  in Design Organization Approval, DOA.

Practical skills and experience in the creation and implementation of the DAS, it is advisable to accumulate in the process of moving into international markets amphibian Be-200ES-E, the demand for which, as well as statements about the absence of obstacles in the form of sanctions, confirmed requests and other documents aimed at UAC companies and organisations of the EU and the United States through the appropriate trade representation of the Russian Federation. To this end, it is advisable to include the Be-200ES-E project in the list of promising projects.

Companies, primarily interested in promoting their products to the markets, it is advisable to begin to rapidly implement in their organizations procedures and organizational structures built on the basis of European, but, of course, taking into account the specific Russian conditions.

In addition to facilitating interaction with EASA and FAA, foreign customers, the introduction of Russian developers of Design Assurance system, which are the basic systems for the approval of design organizations by certification bodies, provide a reduction in the cost of development and certification of the aviation equipment.

Another important argument for the implementation of the DAS is the fact that combining the efforts of companies from different countries in the design of modern aircraft models requires a harmonized field of procedures and standards that establish the rules of interaction and requirements for the design process.

The additional costs of DAS activities in the early stages of the project are not only compensated for later, but also provide significant savings in overall project costs through early detection and elimination of design omissions, compared to the costs for the same purposes in the later stages of the life cycle, when the level of such costs can be extremely high.