Soaring to New Heights: The Future of DO-330 in Aerospace

The standard brings aerospace in line with other industries, providing guidance for qualifying tools used in developing and verifying software. And in an ever-changing technological landscape, where AI and automation are on the rise, a means to ensure each component of a software system is operating as it should be is critical to success. 

Our Principal Engineer in Aerospace, Tomé Gomes, recently spoke to Vance Hilderman, CEO of AFuzion. Vance has over 30 years’ experience in safety-critical aviation, avionics systems, software and hardware development, and certification solutions, and has thrown light on some of the impacts DO-330 has had on the industry. 

What impact do you see DO-330 having on tool qualification in the aerospace industry? 

DO-330 was copied by ISO for automotive (ISO 26262) and that really boosted worldwide adoption of tool qualification. Since there are more automotive lines of code than aircraft, more tool vendors adopted tool qualification, so today we have many more choices. Worldwide certification authorities and militaries are requiring consistent tool qualification in line with DO-330 so it is a recognised requirement. AFuzion believes tool qualification activities are a high growth area surpassing 10% annual growth, perhaps 15-20% annually. Not huge, but larger than the aviation industry’s solid 5-10% overall growth in the past three years.  

In your experience, what are the most common misconceptions about DO-330, and how can industry professionals overcome them? 

There are five Tool Qualification Levels; the amount of work between each of them varies tremendously! TQL 3 is 3-4X more work than TQL 4, for example. But less experienced professionals lump them all together and say ‘tool qual is easy’ (it is for TQL5; it is not for TQL3), or “tool qual is difficult” (it is for for TAL 1, 2, and 3; less so for TQL 4 and 5).  

How do you see the role of DO-330 evolving as technology advances, particularly with the rise of AI and machine learning in software tools? 

We will see AI widely assisting with tool qualification activities, and AI itself will be partially qualified. But AI can also be used to automate these reviews, which will in turn negate the need to qualify the tool because that tool’s output can then be reviewed. But in that case, will the AI itself need to be qualified? Ah, that is the question we’re working with FAA/EASA to resolve at the moment! 😉 

Want to find out more about DO-330 and its future in a smart tech landscape? Read our white paper here. 

Or are you ready to speak to us about how we can support you on your tool qualification journey? If you are, reach out to Magno who’ll be happy to take your aerospace software to the highest heights.