- SAE
- Society of Automotive Engineers, some subset of this group specializes in aeronautics
- SARP
- Standards and Recommended Practices
- SC
- Special Committee, anything that starts with SC is an industry working committee to discuss and resolve particular issues. Examples include SC-180 CEH (wrote the DO-254 standard), SC-200 integrated modular avionics, SC-205 software for aeronautical use. See also WG.
- SOI 1-4
- Stage of Involvement, one of 4 required review points between a HW/SW vendor and certification authority during the DO-178B or DO-254 process.
- SSA
- System Safety Assessment, the process run at a system level to determine the safety criticality level or design assurance level (A-E) or a system. A preliminary system safety assessment is the PSSA.
- STC
- Supplemental Type Certificate, a document issued by the Federal Aviation Administration approving a product (aircraft, engine, or propeller) modification.
- Time Partitioning
- using an operating system's scheduler to ensure that selected tasks and processes have access to the CPU for a specified amount of time within a specific period
- TC
- Type Certificate. Granted by the FAA to certify an entire aircraft. See also STC.
- TSO
- Technical Standard Order, a minimum performance standard issued by the FAA for specified materials, parts, processes, and appliances used on civil aircraft
- UAS
- Unmanned Aircraft Standards, DO-304, guidance just produced by SC203 and being considered by FAA. Requires both DO-254 and DO-178B certification.
- V&V
- Validation and Verification
- WG
- Working Group from EuroCAE, the EU equivalent of the US-based SC (special committees, oftentimes linked directly to these activities, examples wG72 is leading the effort on aeronautical systems security, WG-71 = SC-205