Procedia Engineering 17 (2011) 358 – 368 1877-7058 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2011.10.041 Available online at www.sciencedirect.com The 2nd International Symposium on Aircraft Airworthiness (ISAA 2011) Do safety cases have a role in aircraft certification? SUN Linling a *, ZHANG Wenjin b , Tim KELLY a a Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, YO10 5GH, UK b School of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100083, P.R.China Abstract Safety cases, as a means of demonstrating system safety, have been increasingly used as the basis for system assurance, especially in safety or mission-critical systems in fields such as offshore installation, railway operations, nuclear plants, and air traffic control. Despite the increased adoption of safety cases in the aforementioned areas, the usage of safety arguments is still limited in the certification of a civil aircraft design. This paper provides 1) a brief overview of the key regulations and guidelines in support of aero-system certification especially at the development stage; 2) a review of the history, the essence, and the practice of safety cases; 3) an analysis of the role of processes and safety arguments in aircraft certification; and 4) recommendations on the future work in terms of further application of safety cases in aircraft certification. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Airworthiness Technologies Research Center NLAA, and Beijing Key Laboratory on Safety of Integrated Aircraft and Propulsion Systems, China Keywords: Airworthiness; Certification process; Safety arguments; Safety case; Safety analysis 1. Introduction Certification [1], as the ‘legal recognition’ of the level of intended functions and other attributes of a system, is important for regulatory bodies, developers, and end-users. In the aerospace domain, formal certification has long been required and practiced for aircraft and systems that implement the aircraft functions to confirm that their design, maintenance and operation are acceptably safe. With the driver of more capable systems and the development of new technologies, modern aero- systems are becoming increasingly complex, e.g. digital engine control, Integrated Modular Avionics. As * Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 -1904 325428; Fax: +44- 1904325599. E-mail address: linling.sun@cs.york.ac.uk.