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The crash impact characteristics of commuter category airplanes has recently been established using empirical procedures based on full scale aircraft impact test data for a range of aircraft sizes[1]. To compliment that empirical approach the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initiated a full scale commuter category airplane vertical impact test program. Those airplane vertical impact tests were structured to evaluate the airframe's capability to maintain its structural integrity and provide a protective shell for its occupants, to quantify the acceleration impact response characteristics of the airframe, and to evaluate the means necessary to provide occupant pelvic/lumbar column load injury protection up to the limits of survivable impact conditions.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), along with its industry contractors, have progressed toward a mutual goal of improving structural crash dynamics analytical methodologies for transport airplanes. The objectives, results, and initial findings of many of the research program tasks, such as the transport airplane fuselage section drop tests, the complete narrow-body airplane drop test, and the Controlled Impact Demonstration (CID), are presented. The manner in which these tests are integrated into analytical modeling methodology and their relationship to the development of improved structural crash dynamic design criteria are addressed.

THE FAA’s current aircraft crash dynamics engineering and development program plan elements are addressed. The overall program logic is delineated in a manner which illustrates the synergistic effect of each individual program element. Deficiencies in past and current findings are presented along with proposed means of resolving these issues. The subject crash dynamics program is structured to develop the technical data base and methodologies necessarily required to assess the crash dynamic environment and occupant survivability characteristics of transport category aircraft.