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Mr. Barnes is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Chief Scientific and Technical Advisor for Structural Loads and Design Criteria, and in this position he is responsible for recommending appropriate research to support his discipline. He recommended the establishment of the FAA Operational Loads Monitoring Program in 1988, (Reference 1) and continues to actively promote and monitor the research, and use of the results.

The application of individual airplane structures and systems tracking to commercial transports has been slow. This paper discusses a procedure by which data collected on a representative sample of a commercial transport fleet can be used to understand aircraft loading cycles on systems and structures.

In support of the Federal Aviation Administration Aging Aircraft Research Program, the Agency has established a Flight Loads Data Collection Program for Commercial Aircraft. The objectives of this Program are to: Review existing data collected by other sources including but not limited to U.S., Foreign, Military, etc. Collect current operational usage data from both large and small transport aircraft. Develop criteria for future generations of transports. This paper presents the status of the various programs which are completed, underway or planned. The FAA will be collecting, storing, and analyzing the data which characterize typical commercial transport operations. The airframe manufacturers will handle the task of calculating the loads and stresses.

Since the first airplane was certified in 1927, the standard configuration has been with the main lifting surface or surfaces forward of the stabilizing surface. Although some of the advantages of the canard configuration were recognized quite early - by the Wright Brothers, for example - canard surfaces have been used to date only as additional control surfaces on some military airplanes, and on some amateur built airplanes. As a result, the Airworthiness Regulations of Reference 1 address only tail aft configurations. When FAA was first approached regarding certification of a canard configured small airplane, an FAA/Industry Empennage Loads Working Group was formed to develop technical proposals for the necessary rule changes and policy. The concerns addressed by this working group are discussed in the following sections.