I agree with you from the passing standpoint. I
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I think that's a plain and simple answer: Give Baltia the pass because the rules are improperly written and they did everything in their control to succeed.
I think my concern lies more with, even if given the pass, can you let Baltia move into proving flights without having slides that work at a better rate installed? Do they say, "what's one more plane in the air?" or do they say, "yeah, you've passed, but we're not letting you fly that thing until this issue is fixed."
The more I think about that, though, the more that definitely opens them up to a lawsuit from Baltia unless they ground all the 747-200's.
Are the 200's the only ones with this issue? Or is it more global than that. If so, is grounding 30 planes really the end of the world to the FAA?