AEROCHARIS
PATHWAYS

TWO PATHS INTO
U.S. AEROSPACE.

Most Korean companies arrive with the engineering already done and stall on everything around it. These are the two routes, and what each one actually asks of you.

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Before you read on — where do you actually stand?

Working through fifteen stages is easier once you know which ones already apply to you. The assessment takes about five minutes: seventeen questions across quality, certification, export control, manufacturing and business readiness.

17 questions · about 5 minutes · result shown immediately

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ROUTE A

PRODUCT CERTIFICATION

Product airworthiness certification

TC / STC

WHAT IT IS
A Type Certificate (TC) is FAA approval of a new aircraft, engine, or propeller design as meeting the applicable airworthiness standards. A Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) approves a major change to a product that already holds a TC.
WHY IT MATTERS
Without a TC or STC, an aircraft, engine, propeller, or major modification cannot be operated commercially in the United States. It is the foundational approval that everything else in this route refers back to.
TYPICAL DURATION
Full TC programs for new aircraft or engines are typically measured in years; a well-scoped STC is commonly cited as roughly 12–24 months. Both vary widely with product novelty and authority workload.

Timelines above are broad, illustrative ranges only. Actual duration depends on product complexity, scope, prior program experience, and current authority or certification-body workload. They are not commitments, guarantees, or estimates of any specific program.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies often treat this as a submission to file once the design is finished. In practice, the certification basis and means of compliance have to be agreed with the FAA (directly or through a DER) well before the design is frozen — arriving with a finished design usually means expensive rework, not a faster review.

TSO

WHAT IT IS
A Technical Standard Order (TSO) authorization lets a manufacturer produce and mark an article — an appliance, material, or part — as meeting a specific FAA minimum performance standard, independent of any single aircraft.
WHY IT MATTERS
Without TSO authorization, an article generally has to be approved separately for each aircraft installation. TSO lets a supplier sell one standardized, pre-approved article into multiple aircraft programs.
TYPICAL DURATION
Commonly cited in the range of roughly 12–24 months depending on the article's complexity and required test scope, and only once the applicant's own production quality system is in place.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies design and test the article first, then discover TSO authorization also requires an FAA-recognized production system already running under Part 21 — the design work and the quality-system work have to converge, not happen one after the other.

PMA

WHAT IT IS
Parts Manufacturer Approval (PMA) is FAA approval to design and produce a replacement or modification part for an already type-certificated product, combining design approval and production approval in one.
WHY IT MATTERS
Without PMA, a part cannot legally be sold as an FAA-approved replacement part for existing certificated aircraft. It is the most common route for aftermarket and replacement-part suppliers.
TYPICAL DURATION
Timelines differ sharply by category — an 'identicality' PMA referencing the original design data can move faster than one requiring independent test-and-computation data. Ranges from several months to well over a year are commonly discussed.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

The hard part is rarely manufacturing capability — it's obtaining or independently substantiating the original design data, which the original OEM often controls and has no obligation to share.

Part 21 Production Approval

WHAT IT IS
14 CFR Part 21 is the FAA framework covering both design approvals (TC, STC, TSO, PMA) and production approvals — the separate demonstration that a company can manufacture an approved design repeatably and conformingly.
WHY IT MATTERS
A design approval alone does not authorize a company to manufacture and sell parts at scale. Production approval is the evidence of the quality system, inspection, and conformity processes needed to do that.
TYPICAL DURATION
Establishing a production approval on top of an existing design approval commonly takes many months to over a year, driven largely by the maturity of the underlying quality system.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies that already hold general manufacturing or ISO 9001 certification often assume that is sufficient. The aerospace-specific conformity and documentation bar (see AS9100D in Route B) is materially higher and usually requires real process change.

DO-160 Environmental

WHAT IT IS
DO-160 (RTCA) / ED-14 (EUROCAE) defines the environmental test conditions and procedures — temperature, vibration, electromagnetic interference, lightning, altitude, and more — that airborne equipment must be shown to withstand.
WHY IT MATTERS
Environmental qualification evidence is a required input to most certification paths, including TSO, STC, and PMA. Without it, equipment cannot be shown airworthy for its intended installation environment.
TYPICAL DURATION
Full test campaigns commonly run from a few months to about a year, depending on how many sections and severity categories apply, plus test-lab scheduling and any retest cycles.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

The test categories and severity levels have to be chosen against the real installation early, because they define what the design must survive. Testing a design that is not yet final is a frequent, costly cause of retesting once it changes.

DO-178C Software

WHAT IT IS
DO-178C (RTCA) / ED-12C (EUROCAE) defines the process and objectives for developing and certifying airborne software, scaled to a Design Assurance Level (DAL A through E) set by the safety assessment.
WHY IT MATTERS
Certified software needs objective, auditable evidence that its development process met the objectives for its assigned DAL — requirements traceability, verification records, and configuration management, not just working code.
TYPICAL DURATION
Depends heavily on DAL and software size. The process overhead on top of normal development is commonly described as substantial, and is usually measured in many months to multiple years for higher assurance levels.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Teams frequently write the software first and try to assemble DO-178C evidence afterward. Because it is a process standard, evidence gaps found late — missing requirements traceability, in particular — often mean redoing verification work, not just paperwork.

DO-254 Hardware

WHAT IT IS
DO-254 (RTCA) / ED-80 (EUROCAE) defines the design assurance process for complex custom airborne electronic hardware — FPGAs, ASICs, and similar — the hardware counterpart to DO-178C.
WHY IT MATTERS
Complex custom hardware in a certified system needs objective evidence that its design process met the DAL-appropriate DO-254 objectives, in addition to standard electronics quality and reliability testing.
TYPICAL DURATION
Broadly comparable in scale to DO-178C — driven by DAL and hardware complexity, with process and verification artifacts adding significant time on top of the hardware design itself.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

DO-254 applies only to hardware that is 'complex' in its specific sense, as opposed to simple or commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Teams sometimes misjudge whether their device is in scope, or find out mid-development — after design decisions that make compliance far harder to retrofit.

FHA / PSSA / SSA

WHAT IT IS
The ARP4754A / ARP4761 safety assessment process — Functional Hazard Assessment, Preliminary System Safety Assessment, and System Safety Assessment — identifies failure conditions, assigns their severity and Design Assurance Level, and shows the final design meets its safety requirements.
WHY IT MATTERS
This is what actually assigns the DALs that DO-178C and DO-254 work is scoped against. Without it, there is no defensible basis for how much rigor a given piece of software or hardware needs.
TYPICAL DURATION
Runs alongside the whole development program rather than as a single discrete phase — an initial FHA is expected very early, with the PSSA and SSA maturing as the design does.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Teams strong in hardware and software engineering often have no in-house ARP4754A/4761 practice at all. The FHA gets skipped or done superficially, and the DAL assignments it should have driven turn out to be wrong once a customer or DER reviews them.

ROUTE B

OEM SUPPLY CHAIN

OEM supply-chain entry

AS9100D

WHAT IT IS
AS9100D is the aerospace-specific quality management system standard, built on ISO 9001 with additional requirements for configuration management, risk management, first article inspection, and counterfeit-parts prevention.
WHY IT MATTERS
Most aerospace OEMs and Tier 1s will not open a serious technical conversation with a supplier that lacks AS9100D certification, or a credible plan and timeline to obtain it. It is usually the first gate, before technical capability is even assessed.
TYPICAL DURATION
Commonly cited as roughly 6–18 months from an existing ISO 9001 base to certification, longer without one, depending on organizational readiness and certification-body scheduling.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies often treat AS9100D as 'ISO 9001 plus paperwork.' The aerospace-specific requirements demand real process and cultural change, not a rewritten quality manual, and audits routinely surface the gap.

NADCAP

WHAT IT IS
NADCAP (managed by PRI) is an industry-run accreditation program for 'special processes' — heat treatment, welding, non-destructive testing, plating, and similar processes whose results can't be fully verified by inspecting the finished part alone.
WHY IT MATTERS
If a company's product involves any of these processes, most OEMs require NADCAP accreditation for that specific process — in-house or at a subcontractor — as a condition of supply, independent of the company's own AS9100D status.
TYPICAL DURATION
The accreditation cycle for a defined process and scope is commonly a matter of months, but only once the process itself is mature and documented against NADCAP's process-specific checklists.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Not every company needs NADCAP directly. A common early mistake is not knowing whether it applies at all — many software and avionics-only suppliers do not need it — or discovering late that a subcontracted process must be accredited.

AS9102 First Article Inspection

WHAT IT IS
AS9102 defines First Article Inspection (FAI) — a full, characteristic-by-characteristic dimensional and functional verification of the first production part, or of any part after a change that resets its design, against its complete definition.
WHY IT MATTERS
OEMs typically will not accept production parts until a compliant FAI has been completed and accepted. It is the evidence that the part as actually made matches the full drawing and specification, not a spot check.
TYPICAL DURATION
The inspection itself is often completed within weeks once tooling and gauging are ready; building the internal discipline to do it correctly the first time is the larger, ongoing investment.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Manufacturers experienced in less document-intensive industries often underestimate how exhaustive AS9102's characteristic-accountability requirement is — every dimension and note on the drawing must be individually verified and recorded. Incomplete FAI packages are a frequent cause of rejected first articles.

Traceability

WHAT IT IS
Traceability is the ability to trace a part — and the material and process history behind it — back through its full supply chain: raw material heat/lot, processing steps, and inspection records, to its origin.
WHY IT MATTERS
OEMs rely on traceability to support airworthiness investigations, recalls, and counterfeit-parts prevention. A part without a defensible paper trail is generally unusable regardless of its physical quality.
TYPICAL DURATION
Not a one-time approval but an operating system built into procurement, production, and record-keeping — retrofitting it onto existing operations commonly takes longer than building it in from the start.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies that have historically sold into less regulated markets often don't retain or link records — mill certificates, lot numbers, sub-tier supplier data — at the granularity aerospace requires, and find the gap only when an OEM audit asks for one part's full history.

AS5553

WHAT IT IS
AS5553 is the SAE standard for detecting and preventing counterfeit electronic parts from entering the supply chain, covering procurement controls, inspection, and disposition of suspect parts.
WHY IT MATTERS
OEMs increasingly require documented AS5553 (or equivalent) procedures as a condition of supply for electronic components, and it is closely tied to the traceability requirement above.
TYPICAL DURATION
A written procedure can be drafted quickly; demonstrating it in practice — controlled purchasing channels, incoming inspection, records — takes longer and is usually verified during an OEM or AS9100D audit.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

The common failure is procurement, not documentation: buying electronic components through non-authorized distribution channels for cost or availability reasons is exactly what AS5553 controls exist to prevent.

ITAR / EAR

WHAT IT IS
ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and EAR (Export Administration Regulations) are the two U.S. regimes controlling, respectively, defense articles/services and dual-use items. Determining which regime applies, and under what classification, comes before any U.S. defense-adjacent supply relationship can proceed.
WHY IT MATTERS
Exporting, or even sharing technical data about, a controlled item without correct classification and authorization is a serious legal exposure for both the Korean company and its U.S. counterpart. OEMs will not proceed without a clear classification.
TYPICAL DURATION
Classification itself can often be completed within weeks once the product is well understood; any required license or agreement (such as a Technical Assistance Agreement) can add months depending on the item and end use.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies often assume a commercial, non-military product automatically falls outside ITAR/EAR scope. Classification depends on technical characteristics and specific end use — not on how the company itself categorizes the product — and the mistake is usually caught only when a U.S. partner's legal or export-control team reviews the relationship.

OEM Supplier Quality Requirements

WHAT IT IS
Each OEM — Boeing, Airbus, and others — layers its own supplier quality requirements on top of the baseline standards above: its own supplier manual, quality clauses, approved-supplier process, and program-specific flow-down requirements.
WHY IT MATTERS
Meeting AS9100D and the other baseline standards is necessary but not sufficient. Each OEM's own onboarding and approval process is a separate, additional gate, with its own timeline, scorecards, and documentation.
TYPICAL DURATION
Highly variable by OEM and by commodity; the baseline standards above are typically expected to be substantially in place before this stage even begins.

WHERE COMPANIES GET STUCK

Companies treat AS9100D certification as the finish line, then discover that becoming an approved supplier to a specific OEM is its own multi-step process layered on top — with its own audits and flow-down contract requirements that vary program to program.

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