IMFLAR: An Intuitive Method for Logical Avionics Reliability

The continued growth of the general aviation fleet demands the need of forever improved preventive methods of failure analysis, in order to reduce the number of incidents or accidents. It has been proved that one possible solution to avoid unsafe conditions is the installation of new avionic systems. This article presents the method named IMFLAR - an Intuitive Method For a Logical Avionics Reliability, an analysis method for avionic systems installations based on a conceptual model of human factors and an artificial neural network application, giving an overview of these installations and analyzing the involved risk factors. This is a new preventive approach that establishes a relationship between unsafe characteristics observed during the installation of avionic systems and an operational database of incidents and accidents, in order to provide a framework to make aviation safer. Additionally, this article describes the steps to obtain the necessary parameters that ought to be used to avoid unsafe conditions for a modification that installs an avionics system in the aircraft.