Fly-by-light installation and maintenance on transport aircraft

Over the past seven years McDonnell Douglas Aerospace-Transport Aircraft/Douglas Aircraft Company (MDA-TA/DAC) has developed, installed, and tested a number of fiber optic systems on various commercial transport aircraft. From our experience installing and maintaining many different types of fiber optic flight test systems, it has become evident that the problems associated with the installation and maintenance of fiber optic systems is perhaps the greatest impediment remaining to their incorporation on transport aircraft. This paper discusses the problems and issues associated with installing and maintaining fly-by-light systems on transport aircraft as well as some approaches and concepts being developed at MDA-TA to alleviate these problems.