General:

This SAE Aerospace Standard (AS) defines minimum performance standards, qualification requirements, and minimum documentation requirements for passenger and crew seats in civil rotorcraft, transport aircraft, and general aviation aircraft. The goal is to achieve comfort, durability, and occupant protection under normal operational loads and to define test and evaluation criteria to demonstrate occupant protection when a seat/occupant/restraint system is subjected to statically applied ultimate loads and to dynamic impact test conditions set forth in the applicable Federal Regulations 14 CFR 23, 25, 27, or 29.

Guidance for test procedures, measurements, equipment, and interpretation of results is also presented to promote uniform techniques and to achieve acceptable data.

While this document addresses system performance, responsibility for the seating system is divided between the seat supplier and the installation applicant. The seat supplier's responsibility consists of meeting all the seat system performance requirements and obtaining and supplying to the installation applicant all the data prescribed by this document. The installation applicant has the ultimate system responsibility in assuring that all requirements for safe seat installation have been met.

Applicability:

This document addresses the performance criteria for seat systems requiring dynamic testing to be used in civil rotorcraft, transport aircraft, and general aviation aircraft.

Seat Types:

This document covers all passenger and crew seats for use in aircraft type-certificated in the following categories shown in Table 1:

Units:

In this document U.S. customary units (in-pound) and International System of Units (SI) are provided. In all cases, the in-pound units take precedence and the SI (metric) units provided are approximate and conservative conversions. Those who routinely use SI units in practice may make the conversions more precise.