__NOTOC__
Advisory circular (AC) refers to a type of publication offered by the
Federal Aviation Administration
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...
(FAA) to provide guidance for compliance with
airworthiness regulations, pilot certification, operational standards, training standards, and any other rules within the
14 CFR Aeronautics and Space Title. They define acceptable means, but not the only means, of accomplishing or showing compliance with airworthiness regulations. Generally informative in nature, Advisory Circulars are neither binding nor regulatory; yet some have the effect of ''de facto'' standards or regulations.
Advisory circulars typically refer to industry standards from
SAE (ARP) and
RTCA (DO). With harmonization of technical content and guidance between
EASA
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is an agency of the European Union (EU) with responsibility for civil aviation safety. It carries out certification, regulation and standardisation and also performs investigation and monitori ...
and the FAA, later advisory circulars also identify corresponding
EUROCAE (ED) publications.
Some advisory circulars are only a few pages long and do little more than reference a recommended standard; for example,
AC 20-152 The Advisory Circular AC 20-152, Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware, identifies the RTCA-published standard DO-254 as defining "an acceptable means, but not the only means" to secure FAA approval of complex custom micro-coded ...
referencing
DO-254
RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED-80, Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware is a document providing guidance for the development of airborne electronic hardware, published by RTCA, Incorporated and EUROCAE. The DO-254/ED-80 standard w ...
. Others, like
AC 20-115
The Advisory Circular __NOTOC__
Advisory circular (AC) refers to a type of publication offered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide guidance for compliance with airworthiness regulations, pilot certification, operational standa ...
C/D, are considerably longer; in this case including guidance on how to transition from DO-178 revision B to C.
AC 20-115D
FAA, Office AIR-134, 2017.
See also
*Airworthiness Directive
An Airworthiness Directive (commonly abbreviated as AD) is a notification to owners and operators of certified aircraft that a known safety deficiency with a particular model of aircraft, engine, avionics or other system exists and must be correct ...
(in comparison, airworthiness directives are legally enforceable rules)
References
Avionics
Federal Aviation Administration
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