What FAI records must be retained for the life of an aircraft program?

Not by default as a single universal rule. Retention periods for First Article Inspection records depend on the governing contract, customer flowdowns, internal quality record requirements, and any applicable regulatory or airworthiness record obligations. In aerospace programs, the practical answer is usually to retain the complete FAI evidence set for as long as the part number, configuration, or support obligation remains active, and often longer if customer terms require it.

If you are asking what records are typically retained when an organization is expected to preserve FAI traceability across the life of a program, the retained package usually includes:

• the approved FAI report package, including Forms 1, 2, and 3 or the equivalent customer-approved format
• the drawing and specification revision used for the FAI
• ballooned drawings or characteristic accountability evidence tied to the submitted FAI
• objective evidence for each reported characteristic, such as inspection results, CMM outputs, manual inspection records, and test results where applicable
• material and special process certifications referenced by the FAI
• traceability to the manufacturing lot, serial number, batch, or work order used for the FAI part, where applicable
• records of nonconformances, deviations, concessions, or waivers that affected the FAI submission or acceptance
• delta or partial FAI records tied to subsequent design, process, source, tooling, location, or lapse-triggered changes
• approval status, customer submission evidence, and any acceptance or rejection correspondence if customer review was required
• revision history and superseded FAI records needed to show configuration lineage over time

The key point is not just keeping the latest form set. In a regulated, long-lifecycle aerospace environment, you often need enough retained evidence to reconstruct what was approved, against which configuration, using which objective evidence, and what changed afterward. That is a traceability and change control problem as much as a document retention problem.

What should be preserved even when systems change

If records are moved between QMS, MES, PLM, ERP, or supplier portals, preserve the linkage between the FAI package and the underlying evidence. A PDF copy of the forms alone may not be enough if the supporting measurement files, certs, drawing revisions, or approval metadata are stored elsewhere. Migration projects commonly break those links.

That matters in brownfield environments because many plants have FAI evidence split across legacy inspection software, shared drives, Net-Inspect or similar portals, ERP attachments, and paper archives. Full system replacement often fails to remove this problem. In aerospace programs, replacing everything at once can create qualification burden, validation cost, downtime risk, and loss of evidence lineage if mappings are weak. Coexistence with legacy repositories is often the safer path, but only if indexing, revision control, and retrieval are well governed.

What determines the actual retention period

Your actual retention rule may be driven by:

• customer or prime contract language
• purchase order flowdowns
• internal quality management procedures
• part criticality and support-life expectations
• whether the part remains in production, spares, repair, or sustainment service
• how your organization defines record supersession versus archival retention

So if the real question is, “Can we purge old FAI records once a newer FAI exists?” the safe answer is usually no, not without confirming the contractual and quality record basis for doing so. Superseded FAIs may still be needed to show historical configuration, support investigations, respond to customer requests, or validate when a partial FAI was triggered and why.

If you need a plant-level rule, define it in controlled procedure form, map it to customer and program requirements, and validate that your systems can retain both the report and its evidence trail. Without that, retention is often inconsistent even when the stated policy sounds clear.