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This SAE Aerospace Information Report (AIR) provides a record of the development by SAE AGE-2A Air Cargo Sub-Committee of Aerospace Standard AS36100, Air Cargo Unit Load Devices - Performance Requirements and Test Parameters, published 2005-02, intended as a technical reference for airworthiness approval of air cargo unit load devices (pallets, nets and containers) to be loaded with either baggage or freight on board civil transport aircraft, and to partly supersede previously used NAS 3610, Cargo unit load devices - Specification for - [Revision 10, 1990, referenced in TSO C90c].

AS36100 was developed over a 5 year period (1999-2004) by a Panel of SAE AGE-2A designated as "NAS 3610 Oversight Panel" (OSP), based on a worldwide industry consensus that NAS 3610, used since 1969 as technical reference for TSO C90c, had become largely obsolescent, not properly understood by many of its users, and still contained errors while document sponsor AIA stated they were not going to update or revise this document. This consensus was initially reached at the International Standardization Organization (ISO) TC20/SC9, Air Cargo Sub-Committee meeting Nr 29 (1998, Memphis, TN), which hence agreed to prepare a corrigendum (published 2000) to ISO 8097 (based on NAS 3610), and to entrust SAE AGE-2A, on behalf of the industry, with identification of the needs for a replacement document. AGE-2A in 1999 created the OSP, which undertook a systematic review of the air cargo industry's actual requirements and the step by step development and discussion of AS36100.

The scope of the OSP work, thus the present AIR, also included other documents - some of which existed, some of which were subsequently developed - associated with AS36100 or supplementing it, covering such other areas as continued airworthiness requirements, design and testing methods, unit load devices design specifications and accessories, and rules for their proper operation/utilization and operating staff training.