A certification-basis compliance matrix is the table that lists every requirement of the certification basis, states whether and how it applies to the design, names the means of compliance and points to the compliance document that carries the evidence.
EASA calls it the compliance checklist and expects it inside the certification programme under AMC 21.A.15(b). The FAA asks for the same document in the certification plan under Order 8110.4C. Different names, same table, same purpose: to show the authority, requirement by requirement, how compliance will be demonstrated and where the evidence is.
Lavionic‘s guide, “Certification-basis compliance matrix: EASA Part 21 and FAA“, is written by an airworthiness engineer who has built these matrices for manned and unmanned programmes for more than twenty years. Its starting point is that the matrix that produces findings is rarely the one with the wrong means of compliance code. It is the one that lost track of itself over the programme: applicability statements never revisited after a design change, compliance documents renamed without the matrix following, special conditions and equivalent safety findings sitting outside the table, and a compliance statement written before the evidence existed.
The guide sets out what the regulators expect the matrix to contain, explains the means of compliance codes MC0 to MC9 under AMC 21.A.20(c), and describes the columns a matrix needs if it is to survive from application to type certificate. It then gives eight steps to build one, in the order that keeps it consistent.
The section on the division of labour with AI is explicit. Populating the matrix from the applicable specification and the design description is largely mechanical: listing the paragraphs, carrying over the amendment level, proposing an applicability statement from the design description, proposing a means of compliance from precedent. AI can draft most of those columns without skipping a paragraph. What AI cannot do is decide. The applicability decision, the choice of means of compliance and the compliance statement are engineering decisions that a named person signs, and the guide marks where that line sits.
It ends with five mistakes that produce findings, drawn from real programmes, and how each one is avoided by the way the matrix is built rather than by extra review at the end.
Wingman360 Teammate, Lavionic’s AI assistant for aviation compliance and certification, drafts compliance matrices in this structure with each entry traced to the clause it comes from, for review by the responsible engineer.
