I was not there and have not seen it. I only can go off of what was reported.
If that's the case, though, what you're suggesting is not preventing Baltia from passing, but taking all of these planes that may have this same issue out of service until this can be rectified.
This is not an issue local to Baltia. It is a global issue. Therefore, the FAA has to decide how they're handling it. Based on the AC released, I can tell you that their plan is basically to wash their hands of it, at least for the time being. Grounding all those planes would be a ridiculous notion, even though safety is paramount.
My point with the above statement is, yes, safety first, but there's no such thing as 100% safe. Based on all the flights that have flown since this was an issue, how many times has it ACTUALLY been an issue that has come into play? How many lives have been lost or ruined as a result of a slide failure? That's a serious question. I'm guessing it's 0 or not enough to factor into the FAA actually considering grounding the planes is my point.
I'm a structural engineer, and I can tell you that the codes are designed in such a way that every structure that I design has safety factors and design loads built in so that there is a very miniscule possibility of failure. However, with that said, there's still a rate of possibility of failure. As engineers, we accept a certain risk percentage as being a tolerable societal risk.
So with that said, all of these planes are flying around with potentially the same issue. FAA is washing their hands of those. To not wash their hands of these tests as well would be unreasonable then, since Baltia did everything within their control to pass. If the slide is truly out of their control (which it is, since it is packed by an FAA-approved manufacturer and not to be tampered with, so there's no regular maintenance to follow), then failing Baltia would be grounds for a lawsuit without question.
My take is that the AC revisions clearly remove all FAA culpability wherever they can, but they also made another change in there that says accidental deployment cannot be the sole cause of failure. If I'm reading how the failures went correctly, that would make mini #3 potentially a pass? And now knowing what we know about the slide issue, not grounding all the planes would also make the latest mini a pass.
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