Flight Test Post-Mortem Guide

General Introduction

Flight Test Post-Mortems are important for analyzing flight performance for overall team improvement. They help convey information on what went well during a test, and what could have been done better. This document will outline the general procedure of conducting effective flight test post-mortems. However, it should be noted that each flight test is unique with respect to its goals and execution, so these guidelines should only be used as a guide rather than a procedure. It will also be assumed that the flight test’s goals were set beforehand in a clear way.

Post Mortem Guidelines

1. Gather all relevant data for your flight test. This could be flight time, sensor readings, and other general equipment data readings. Compile this data into a properly formatted table for ease of organization & comprehension.

2. Compare this data to pre-determined “normal” readings. This means you want to examine the flight test data to look for any positive or negative abnormalities. For example, you could take a sensor reading from a particular time in the Flight Test and compare it to what you think it should have been. This will then lead to an understanding of what could have gone wrong during the flight, and what went well.

3. Now that the data has been analyzed, it’s time to find out potential causes of what could have caused abnormalities. Compile a list of different factors that could have caused these abnormalities. I would recommend having a meeting with the people who were involved in that Test Flight to get their input. After, it is advised to rank these causes/factors from most to least likely. This will help determine what the most probable cause of the abnormality is.

4. Next, discuss possible fixes. Perhaps one small thing needs to be changed? Or, perhaps a system needs to be redone. Again, meet with your team to determine the best course of action.

5. Finally, compile the data into another table. Your table should most likely display all the gathered data (paying special attention to abnormalities). Next, it should have a list of factors that could have led to this abnormality. Then, it should display the most probable factor Finally, it should display a possible fix. A sample table is shown below: