Page 7 - Nov 19 TNT

Tamarack Winglets: Position Report by Dianne White There’s this great adage that goes like this: “Numbers don’t lie, but they are so easy to misrepresent.” Few can relate more directly to that statement than Tamarack Aerospace Founder and CEO Nick Guida. Over the course of more than a year, the developer and manufacturer of the ATLAS active winglet system for the Citation CJ line of business jets was faced with the ultimate test: an EASA and FAA emergency AD followed by a fleet grounding. In the wake of those events, the company filed for bankruptcy protection last June as it sought to get the effected aircraft flying again and restore customers’ confidence in their product. In July, the AD was resolved by requiring all aircraft to comply with Service Bulletin 1480. Since then, the company has sought to make things right for its customers by offering the SB 1480 free of charge and resetting the warranty time period regardless of when the installation occurred. The company is also on solid footing with an infusion of $1.95 million from a group of customers, vendors and supporters. For its founder Guida, this was a painful chap- ter that didn’t necessar- ily need to happen. An engineer with more than 30 years of applied expe- rience, he not only devel- oped the ATLAS system but did much of the flight testing for Tamarack himself. Last month, I sat down with Nick to get the real story regarding the events that led to the AD and what the future looks like for the company. Q: Can you share on the details of what when on with the emergency AD? Guida: The details of the emergency AD are very relevant because the amount of misinformation abounds, and it is important to set the record straight. Many surprises awaited us on this journey of discovery and crisis. The AD was triggered by a false pilot report. The details of the event were highly sensationalized, which prompted EASA to act quickly. Factually, the aircraft response to the fault matched the behavior seen in certification flight testing dur- ing simulated failures (easily recoverable). Every conceivable failure condition was flown during the certification process, including flying with one winglet completely removed. For each failure mode, it was required that all the flight characteristic tests including stalls, takeoff and landings, high speed, low speed and single-engine controllability were performed. You can imagine the FAA, EASA and Tamarack’s surprise when they read that the pilot reported a 90 degree roll in 1 second. It was so different from the results of all the failure mode testing that it caused the immediate grounding of the fleet in the EU. Subsequently, it was no surprise when it was shown through AHRS data obtained from the plane that the actual roll rate matched the flight test at 4.5 degree per second. The incident was completely preventable; the existing ser- vice bulletins were available up to 51 weeks prior, but not November 2019 / TWIN & TURBINE • 5