We are not certifying products in isolation of commercial realities. We have to take into account when certain manufacturers want to sell and operate their aircraft. Even for a certification program that would start and last five to six years, which, for example, was the case with the C Series certified in Canada, we were always working to a target date that was specified by the applicant. That is not unusual at all.
That said, we worked to that as a target date, but we are not necessarily constrained by that. There are cases where we have not met the target date as requested by the manufacturer because we simply weren't finished the job. That's all part of the judgment that my team and I apply as we approach these target dates as to whether, if there are any outstanding issues, they are of concern.
In some cases, as my colleague Mr. Robinson mentioned earlier, some of the disconnects we have with respect to issues on a validation pertain more to generic disharmonization of how we approach the rule, which we will deliberately take outside the project and work on through a harmonization venue versus effectively hold the recipient of the aircraft hostage. In some cases, it may take several years to iron out those differences, but in the end, our decision to validate is based on a degree of confidence that the aircraft is safe, and we rely on the state of design to make that determination.