Since August 11, the FAA has been conducting a special certification review (SCR) of the Eclipse 500 very light jet, the agency said today. A team of seven FAA experts led by former Boeing safety executive Jerry Mack is examining aircraft safety, certification of aircraft trim and flaps, avionics screen blanking and stall speeds. These are issues raised in Service Difficulty Reports (SDR) submitted to the FAA since the Eclipse 500 was certified on Sept. 30, 2006, according to the FAA. “The team will look at whether or not any of these issues were raised during the certification process and if any of the issues are currently a threat to safety,” it noted.
The FAA’s Service Difficulty Reporting System database is currently unavailable due to system upgrades that are due to be completed within a month, and an FAA spokeswoman said that the agency cannot release the Eclipse SDRs except via the Freedom of Information Act request process. An April download of the Eclipse SDRs, however, reveals a number of issues raised by Eclipse 500 operators. These include flap failure; smoke from an MFD; airspeed disagreement between the two primary flight displays; autopilot disengagement; damaged upper right cockpit beam; dings in the vertical stabilizer leading-edge panel; com and nav failure; pixelated PFD; yaw damper failure; stuck right elevator trim tab; uncommanded pitch trim CAS message before takeoff; landing-gear indication problems; brake pedals going to the floor after landing; fire bottle leaking; blown tire on landing; sticking control sticks; and rudder trim runaway. The FAA expects to spend 30 days on the Eclipse 500 SCR.
