Alexandria, VA, March 4, 2014 — The Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) and ARGUS International, Inc. have been working together to offer the charter and fractional ownership industry a single audit combining both the ACSF Industry Audit Standard (IAS) and the ARGUS Platinum Standard. Both the ACSF and ARGUS are pleased to announce they have reached an agreement in principle.
In the near future, ARGUS will offer an Industry Audit Standard (IAS) module as an add-on to its proprietary Platinum Audit Standard. The IAS module will contain operational requirements that have been extracted from best practices used by the FAR Part 121 community and have applicability to the Parts 135 and 91K marketplace. Operators that successfully complete the audit performed against the Platinum standard, including the IAS module, will receive the ARGUS Platinum rating and be added to the ACSF registry.
Both ACSF and ARGUS believe this will be a win-win relationship for the Charter and Fractional operators as they work together to reduce operational risk and redundant workload associated with multiple audits. The two standards will mesh well together as the ARGUS Platinum standard has become the most recognized symbol of an operator’s overall quality to charter buyers around the world, and the IAS is focused on operational and maintenance initiatives that are applied and refined in an effort to assist the commercial business aviation marketplace in achieving safety metrics found in the U.S. Air Carrier marketplace.
ACSF Chairman Jeff Baum said, “The Air Charter Safety Foundation IAS recognized that the scheduled airline community, in part through the use of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) and FAR Part 121, has demonstrated the best safety record in the aviation industry. ACSF Accreditation recognizes a Part 135 operator or Fractional Manager that is utilizing many policies and procedures common to their Part 121 counterparts to further enhance their overall Safety Management System.”
“It is through a cooperative effort and shared mission of safety, that the Air Charter Safety Foundation and ARGUS have been able to bring this program to the marketplace through a single on-site audit event, thereby accomplishing an objective core to the mission statement of the ACSF,” noted Baum.
“ARGUS Platinum has for years now, represented the most sought after rating by charter consumers around the world,” said Joe Moeggenberg, President and CEO of ARGUS. “Yet we recognize that some operators require or desire compliance with other standards, yet dread the thought of the time and money associated with multiple audit events. ARGUS is very pleased to cooperate with the ACSF on their Industry Audit Standard (IAS) initiative, and happy to once again uniquely offer the marketplace the ability to perform one audit event with an outcome pertinent to both Platinum and ACSF requirements.”
“This will represent a significant decrease in both time and cost for each participating charter company, without any compromise to either standard or actual audit,” added Moeggenberg.
