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Bjorn’s Corner: Faster aircraft development. Part 26. AI speeds up processes.
By Bjorn Fehrm and Henry Tam
February 6, 2026, ©. Leeham News: We have completed a detailed, step-by-step analysis of the certification requirements a Part 25 Air Transport airliner in the 200-seat segment must meet.
In our series, we have seen work that could benefit from an AI agent, and other work where we conclude it will be difficult.
We begin this week by outlining areas where we expect AI to reduce the number of work hours required to complete a task. We will attribute these AI-driven work-hour reductions to the appropriate areas of the aircraft Program Plan in Figure 1.
Figure 1. A generic new Part 25 airliner development plan. Source: Leeham Co. Click to see better.
Work that AI can speed up
Over the past few years, AI technologies advanced significantly. It can now generate documents, images, and videos. Agentic AI can even handle (to some extent) multi-step workflows. What are some areas that AI could help to save work hours?
Documents
One area where AI could help is template creation. Templates can affect thousands of documents to be released during a development program. A good template could reduce review time by presenting information consistently.
AI could generate these templates relatively quickly. Users may still need to fine-tune the output to ensure that the templates are suitable for their applications.
In addition to templates, AI can also help with definitions and acronyms lists. These sections are important and often time-consuming for engineers to compile. AI can probably do this faster than its human counterpart.
Furthermore, AI could perform basic quality control of these documents. Companies often have standards for document format, the use of certain terminology, how graphics are labelled, etc. If properly trained, AI could perform some of these tasks, freeing up staff for more value-added work.
Requirements Development
AI can also help with requirements development. Current technology can help engineers quickly identify applicable airworthiness rules for components or subsystems, in our case, in the relevant Part 25 sections. It can also provide justification or explanation for why these rules are applicable. Yet, engineers still need to review and confirm that the information is correct. The person who signs off on the document remains responsible for it.
Structural Design
An airliner in the class we are analyzing contains about four million parts. About half of these are standard parts, such as rivets, fasteners, and fittings. There is also a large number of small parts that are bespoke, such as brackets, clips, etc.
AI could help design simpler parts, conduct relevant analyses, and generate reports for engineers to review. AI-enabled mechanical 3D CAD has advanced to the point where the work-hours required to create these brackets should be substantially reduced.
Support Meetings
With current technologies, AI can be used to take notes and summarize meetings. It has the potential to generate meeting minutes, reducing the workload of engineers and project managers. Keep in mind that the team still needs to ensure all key points and actions are captured. Additional word crafting may be required to handle sensitive topics.
Drafting Documents with an Abundance of Publicly Available Examples
AI could also help draft documents with lots of publicly available training data. For example, AI could help managers draft job descriptions, so they just need to fine-tune the text instead of starting from scratch. The tool would save some hours of work and facilitate the recruiting process.
Where AI helps
These are the areas where, in discussions with experienced airliner developers who contributed to the articles, it was clear that AI assistance would help. Next week, we will review areas where it’s more difficult to see a fit for AI assistance.
Interesting for sure. and spot on. Even if the regulator is doing it in good purpose, its nutty.
A brother used an AI program to review the latest codes for an add on residence. He was doing the work himself and was not up to the current codes (we both built houses back in the day and yes the Inspections were fun as they always had a trick or two up their sleeves to spring on you – it was better to do something wrong deliberately so they had something to say Ah Hah on than to have to corrector an obscure rule). Being experienced he knew generally what the areas would be but some have been added and some have changed. Small house, big house no difference, they all apply the same.
He said it found all the applicable codes, listed chapter and verse. Took all the pain out of it.
He and I had built a house for him and his wife. We did a fantastic job, then the inspectors came in. We had something like 17 non compliance items on electrical alone. The Inspector said, your work is the best I have seen, but your knowledge of the codes left a lot of gaps. Most were easy correction, some a bit in depth. But like COMAC and certification, while our work was safe, it did not meet the rules in a lot of cases. Some had logic and some were just plain stupid. Rules is rules.
Again I do not think the FAA has malice, but woe be the person who argues with them. I was on a house project when the plumber could not be present for that Inspector, so the builder stepped in for him.
He was arguing with the inspector over interpretations. The longer it went on the more violations the inspector found. He finally realized what he was doing to himself, shut up, took his hits and the plumber corrected them, not without some ribbing though.
I was directly involved with what had become the latest issue and the Muni had new trained inspectors with that as their top item (though shalt not have any cross connections which is very important)
So the Inspector comes in and cites the Cafeteria for a cross connections. No mam, it is not, the wand cannot get into the water its mechanically restricted from doing so.
Inspector won. My company said (and they were right) its easier to add the back-flow device than fight with them despite you being right. They were right.
As we were not builders I did not have to worry about telling the Inspector they were wrong and we only complied to get them off our case. I rubbed it in, I know where that came from, I have been to the same class, you have not a clue what you are talking about because you are not a plumber, you are a hired inspector reading things and making your own interpretations. Wind up inspector with no knowledge. You win but you should go back to school!
For those who think this has no point it does. Certification is very rigid. It has to be. I have found code items that were flat mechanically wrong. One created more of a hazard than its theory solved (theory was wrong and no idea how it got into the codes, every mfg of that type of equipment said not to do it that way, there was a way around it but it also failed once in a while causing a far work issue and the downside was it did not solve the issue they said was there, nuts).
An aircraft mfg is not going to argue on things that do not make any difference. Only a significant cost adder would they disagree and go through the process to correct.
My examples are peanuts compared to aircraft certification standards. Try to go back and fix a problem in an aircraft that may be safe but does not meet the standard.
The word you are looking for is MRJ (yea I know its letters). They got out of sync with cert and the solution was to start over, and they were trying to meet cert.
Anyone want to guess how far out of whack COMAC is? Every nut and bolt let alone structures, fight them all? Right.
I am sure it can be done. Take cert standards, then present your own and the tests to prove it. Get it passed. For every nut and bolt!
Probably get finalized about the year 2500.,
Boeing and the 787 batteries are exactly what cert tries to avoid and why self cert is a bad idea. You can convince yourself its perfect when its not or you can’t prove it is. Boeing failed miserably and the final fix was to build a certification path with standards, tests to prove it and measure to remediate that put the problem to rest.
Thanks,
Henry knows the MRJ well; he was part of the effort to right the ship.