The Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) formally launched its new Industry Audit Standard at press time, a program developed from guidance of leading safety auditors, charter operators, shared aircraft ownership companies and charter consumers. At the same time, the foundation released AVSiS, a revolutionary safety event reporting and tracking system specifically for the on-demand air charter industry and shared aircraft ownership programs.

Industry Audit Standard
The ultimate goal of the new standard is for charter operators and shared aircraft ownership management companies to complete one comprehensive audit on a recurrent basis rather than the multiple audits they currently complete.
The foundation called the Industry Audit Standard “revolutionary” and said it was built from the ground up by ACSF to set the standard for the independent evaluation of an air charter operator’s and/or shared ownership company’s safety and regulatory compliance.
“Our audit standard was crafted to alleviate the substantial costs and redundancies associated with today’s auditing environment – where operators are subject to multiple audits every year that consume precious resources,” said ACSF President James K. Coyne.
With the deployment of the ACSF Industry Audit Standard, the charter consumer can be assured that audited and registered operators are compliant with the highest standards of safety and compliance. Participating independent auditors will be accredited by the ACSF. Becoming audit registered requires the review and approval of the on-site auditor(s) recommendations by an independent review board.
The ACSF has planned the first round of auditor training courses for August, with the first air charter operators being audited this fall and industry-wide availability by early 2009.

AVSiS
AVSiS is a powerful software program that collects detailed safety event data for analysis, response deployment and success measurement, and provides a tool for accounting for the cost savings realized by interventions.
To encourage the wide-spread use of this safety-enhancing tool, ACSF is making the program available to all Part 135 on-demand operators and Part 91K fractional program managers at no charge.
“We believe so strongly in the benefits offered by this program that we are providing the program free to the industry, including online access to the necessary computer servers to house operator databases,” explained ACSF Executive Director Jacqueline Rosser.
“A non-punitive event reporting program is essential to a positive safety culture and to maintain constant safety awareness in a company. It has been estimated that for each fatal accident, as many as 360 incidents occur,” said Russ Lawton, ACSF director of safety management and AVSiS project leader. “Proper investigation of reported incidents or ‘near misses’ provides an opportunity to identify and correct underlying problems before an accident occurs.”
In addition to the individual user benefits, the database structure provided by the ACSF will allow the foundation to conduct high-level analysis of the data to identify industry trends and publish intervention strategies where appropriate, while maintaining the privacy of the unique users. Operator user accounts will be established on a first-come, first-served basis from registrations completed at www.acsf.aero/avsis.