A400M: Instrumentation Architecture for Flight Test

Abstract

The Airbus A400M military transport plane carried out its first flight on December 2009 in Sevilla (Spain). This paper presents the flight and ground architecture designed to perform the flights tests campaign in Spain and in France. The core of the onboard flight test instrumentation is based on distributed network architecture already developed for A380 program. Airbus adapted civilian tests equipment for the A400M military program and various specific items have been designed specifically for this program. Two interconnected flight tests centres located in Sevilla (Spain) and Toulouse (France) are used for the flight tests campaign to ensure interoperability during the tests.