Did Van's certify RV-12?

[wantobe]

Van's Delivers First Factory-Built RV-12

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Vans_Delivery_RV12_208813-1.html

The article does not mention anything about certification. Did Van's certify RV-12? If not, how can they sell it as factory-built?

[Auburntsts]

Yes. The original RV-12 was certified back in 2009 as an S-LSA which is required in order to produce the E-LSA kits of the same design. As the article states, this was a limited production run to test the produciton process with their sub-contractor who actually builds the aircraft.

[Jonathan Harger]

The RV-12 is an S-LSA, so it is certified using industry-derived ASTM consensus standards rather than FAA-derived Part 23 standards. That's one of the reasons S-LSAs are issued a special airworthiness certificate.

[martymayes]

The article does not mention anything about certification. Did Van's certify RV-12? If not, how can they sell it as factory-built?

Certification = signing a form saying aircraft conforms to ASTM consensus standards.

[Bill Berson]

The word certified is probably best retained for aircraft that have been awarded a Type Certificate by the FAA.
SLSA must comply with ASTM consensus standards and then they can get a Special Airworthiness Certificate, but it is not a Type Certificate because of the reduced FAA oversight.

[Jonathan Harger]

Marty, you are spot on: Certifying S-LSA aircraft is basically the manufacturer signing a form stating that it has complied with the ASTM standard.
The overarching confusion with this subject is in the term "certified," which does not always mean "type certificated." All flying aircraft are (or should be!) certified, which means they have an airworthiness certificate (which can be standard, utility, limited, experimental, S-LSA, etc.). Type certificated aircraft either passed Part 23 standards or were grandfathered in to type certification before Part 23 was made law.
So: the RV-12 is not type certificated, but it is certified.

[zaitcev]

Compliance with ASTM standards are not as simple as signing a form, because FAA performs inspections of S-LSA manufacturers. In fact, last year they started making 100% inspections before accepting the form, which include having an FAA away team flying out to overseas manufacturers if we're talking about imports. This increased approval times quite a bit, up to about 12 months.

Note that there's very little to distinguish airplanes certificated in the Primary category and a garden variety S-LSA. RANS S-7 was certified as a Primary category airplane and offered as S-LSA, whereas Cessna 162 moves the opposite direction. It is mostly a question of proper paperwork, but paperwork is everything when it comes to FAA and especially certification.

As Todd mentioned, RV-12 always was an S-LSA, but they only made exactly 2 airframes. This announcement means that they are going to be offering it from the factory, even though the initial production run of the "limited edition" airplanes is completed by the old finisher. In the legal sense you'll be able to buy an S-LSA from Van's, not merely E-LSA.

-- Pete