The Flight Delight – AS 9100 and AS 9110 By Anjalika Singh Vice President, QMII

 

When I think of something sweet to eat, I think of Turkish Delight. It has dates, pistachios, hazelnuts, walnuts, and what makes it tasty are starch and sugar. When I think of flying, I assume that it would desire it’s two main delights – AS 9100 and AS 9110. Somehow, these two get sidelined and somewhere it’s ignored, and something goes amiss leading to an airplane’s malfunction, failure and worse, crash.

 

I oversee admin and sales at QMII. We sell lots of courses and have to be confident in knowing what we are selling and what training we are coordinating for with the students who have enrolled. Most of them are for AS 9100 Rev D and AS 9110 Rev C. The most common question that I am asked about is “what is the difference between AS 9100 and AS 9110?” Also, “if I do one of them like AS 9100 or AS 9110, is the other one taken care of on it’s?

 

The answer to the first question – There’s a difference between AS 9100 and AS 9110.

 

The answer to the second question is – No the other course is not automatically taken care of if you do either AS 9100 or AS 9110.

 

The similarity between AS 9100 Rev D and AS 9110 Rev C is that they both provide Quality Management System (QMS) for the aerospace industry. They were developed by the International Aerospace Quality Group (IAQG) through SAE International. Both standards are based on ISO 9001 as the foundation. AS9100 adds specific requirements for the aerospace manufacturing industry. AS9110 adds specific requirements that are preeminent and fundamental for the maintenance and repair of commercial, private, and military aircrafts.

 

When I try to explain this to these students, they get a better understanding of the concept and differences between AS 9100 and AS 9110. One time, I sat in the class, just to get a clearer perspective of the subject, and I drifted away a little thinking about Denzel Washington’s movie called Flight. Excellent movie made by the guy who directed Forest Gump. Flight is a movie about a pilot who miraculously crash-lands his plane after a mechanical failure, saving nearly everyone on board. He is hailed as the hero, but only for a brief amount of time. Once the investigation begins, the judgement comes to him being a drug abuser and an alcoholic pilot, and that puts him in a different light altogether, completely opposite to being a hero.

 

Out of curiosity, I glanced through Wikipedia to read more about what inspired the writing of this movie, and I see that it was loosely inspired from the plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261. So I started reading more about the actual crash and the emphasis of mechanical failure that led to the crash and zero survivors. The crash happened due to loss of control caused by jackscrew failure because of improper maintenance. During the NTSB’s investigation, it was also discovered that there were significant deficiencies that "the FAA should have uncovered earlier", and the corrective actions to these deficiencies were not effectively done.

 

However, the main bummer was the aircraft design and the certification issues, which made me realize the importance of AS 9100 and AS 9110. It is so good to see the students take interest in AS 9100 and AS 9110 just to be able to add value to it, and I am glad I am able to convey the subject better and add further more value to it for their own benefit in learning AS 9100 and AS 9110.