I am in receipt of a letter from a prime aerospace company that has informed my company the the AWS D17K committee has only recently decided that the "special application" clause given in 5.3.7.5 of AWS D17.1 does not apply to castings. If this is an official change, it would represent a departure from what has been established and allowed in the aerospace casting supplier world for many years. Is there any type of AWS official notification about this decision? This is perceived by those in our industry as a change, not an interpretation that has a large impact on how we are to qualify our welders, so I am very interested in obtaining all of the information I can about this topic. Any information at all about this topic and acceptable approval methods where the type of welding being qualified is actually representative of the type of production welding that we do would be very much appreciated.