Flight Data Monitoring

For business and corporate aviation exclusively

Business or corporate aviation is very different to airline operations. Due to the fact that corporate operators typically fly less frequently, regularly fly to new airports and have a significantly smaller and diverse fleet with a smaller community of pilots than airlines, corporate operators have different Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) or Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) requirements than airlines.

While FDM or FOQA has been around in the commercial airline industry for decades, business aviation has been much slower to adopt this technology. However, more and more, corporate aviation industry leaders realize that many safety and operational benefits can be expected too for business aircraft operators wanting to commit to an FDM system.

Aviaplan is an FDM service provider working exclusively for business aircraft owners/operators.

FDM or FOQA?

What is it exactly and what are the requirements?

A Flight data monitoring (FDM) or Flight Operational Quality Analysis (FOQA) programme can be defined as 'the routine collection and analysis of flight data to develop objective and predictive information for improving safety'.

In practice, it means:

1. Continuously recording flight parameters throughout the flight,
2. Collecting this data from aircraft, and
3. Processing the recordings with the help of specific software to extract safety-relevant information, such as deviations from the operating procedures or abnormal parameter values.

According to ICAO, an operator of an aeroplane of a maximum certified take-off mass in excess of 27.000 kg, or a helicopter with a MTOW in excess of 7.000 kg, shall establish and maintain a flight data analysis programme as part of its safety management system.

BENEFITS

What are the benefits for me as an owner/operator?

A well implemented FDM programme will allow to:

• detect trends in flight operations that are adversely affecting safety, even before they result in a serious incident,
• reliably capture safety-relevant events during flight operations, even if they were not noticed or reported by the flight crew,
• build and maintain a complete and accurate picture of your safety risks, which is essential for an effective safety management system (SMS),
• verify the effectiveness of corrective actions (corrective training, change to operating procedures, equipment retrofit, etc),
• and many more safety-related use cases!

In addition, flight parameters that are collected for an FDM programme may be used for other purposes than safety, such as maintenance, fuel efficiency, etc.