ADVANCED AIR ADDED TO ACSF

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT
Bryan Burns
President
888-723-3135
bburns@acsf.aero

ADVANCED AIR ADDED TO ACSF INDUSTRY AUDIT STANDARD REGISTRY; SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETES THREE-IN-ONE AUDIT

Washington, DC, March 4, 2015 — The Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) is pleased to announce that Advanced Air, LLC, headquartered in Hawthorne, CA has been added to the ACSF Industry Audit Standard (IAS) Registry.

“We are pleased to add Advanced Air to the IAS Registry,” said ACSF president Bryan Burns. “We also congratulate them as the first operator to successfully complete a combined audit of the IAS, ARGUS Platinum and IS-BAO.”

“Advanced Air is proud to be a part of the Air Charter Safety Foundation Registry,” said Advance Air President Levi Stockton. “The experience of having undergone the ACSF audit process left us with a much stronger, cohesive, and safe operation.”

Advanced Air is committed to providing the highest quality of service, with the strongest commitments to safety and customer service.

The IAS is the first and only extensive audit program specifically created for on-demand operators by a committee of Part 135 and 91K industry leaders. It is conducted every 24 months and is in-depth in its evaluation of regulatory compliance and the operator’s SMS program against both FAA and international standards.

Customers should look for the ACSF IAS registered logo and encourage their preferred charter provider to participate in the program. The ACSF makes its operator registry and key company details available at no charge, so verification of IAS registration is quick and easy. Charter consumers can view the registry at www.acsf.aero/registry.

“The vision of the ACSF is to enable on-demand charter providers and fractional program managers to achieve the highest levels of safety in the aviation industry. This goal will be achieved through:

  • Promotion of risk management programs,
  • The adoption of one common industry audit standard,
  • Dissemination of safety information and,
  • Creation of additional programs that advance the goals of the foundation.”

Paramount Signs Flight Dispatch Contract With AAR Airlift Group

Paramount Signs Flight Dispatch Contract With AAR Airlift Group

Contact: Nicole Buzynski Nicole.buzymski@paramountarg.com +1-540-737-4600

Paramount to provide dispatch and flight support for AAR Airlift’s global fleet.

Fredericksburg, Virginia – March 5, 2014 –Paramount Global Ferry & Flight Support, a division of Paramount Aviation Resources Group , a global provider of flight crew personnel and aircraft ferry and flight support services, has signed a contract with AAR Airlift Group to provide dispatch and flight support services to AAR’s fleet.

“We are excited to support AAR. We recognize that AAR has a global operation with a diverse fleet of aircraft that provide essential support to both civilian and military operations. Reliability is critical. Our global dispatch and flight services are a perfect match to provide the services to ensure that AAR Airlift’s crews have the information and support needed to safely complete each flight,” said Rick Wolfer, Paramount Global Ferry and Flight Support Division President.

“We are very pleased with the excellent service Paramount has provided AAR and look forward to their continued support for our future missions, ” said Jeffrey Wehrenberg, Chief Operating Officer, AAR Airlift Group. “AAR provides critical airlift support to government and military operations and has an impeccable safety record. We are confident that Paramount’s expertise and support will help us to maintain that record.”

Paramount Global Ferry and Flight Support has provided aircraft ferry and flight support services to aircraft operators throughout the world since 2008. In that time, Paramount has safely moved and supported hundreds of aircraft, including ATR, Airbus, Beechcraft, Boeing, Bombardier, Dassault Aviation, Dornier, EADS CASA, Fokker, and many other types of aircraft to destinations throughout the world.

“Safety is Paramount in aviation. It’s no coincidence we integrated the word Paramount into our corporate name because it is how we operate,” said Michael W. Johnson, Paramount Aviation Resources Group President and CEO. “Our team works closely with each customer to ensure the crews have the information and support they need to safely and efficiently complete every flight.”

Paramount provides dispatch and flight support and aircraft ferry services throughout the world for any aircraft type. With an in-house global flight dispatch center, Paramount maintains direct contact with crews continuously regardless of their location.

About Paramount Global Ferry and Flight Support

Paramount Global Ferry and Flight Support is a division of Paramount Aviation Resources Group. Founded in 2007, Paramount Aviation Resources Group is quickly becoming the most-trusted provider of leased flight crew personnel and aircraft ferry services in the world. With a commitment to aviation safety, reducing operating costs, and providing impeccable service, Paramount Aviation Resources Group is helping air operators achieve long-term viability. Paramount Aviation Resources Group was formed by airline professionals with thousands of flight hours and decades of experience as line pilots, instructors, and managers at international Part 121 air carriers. Visit Paramount Aviation Resources Group on the web at www.paramountarg.com

 

About AAR Airlift Group

AAR Airlift Group provides expeditionary airlift services in support of contingency operations worldwide. The Company is based in Melbourne, FL, and operates a fleet of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft transporting personnel, supplies, and mail for the U.S. Department of Defense in Afghanistan and the Western Pacific. Visit AAR Airlift Group on the web at www.aarcorp.com/gov/airlift

 

Civil Aviation Authority Safety Review for Offshore Rotor Operations

In September 2013, following a number of incidents involving offshore helicopter operations, the UK CAA, in conjunction with EASA and the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority, conducted a safety review. The review examined the risks and hazards of operating in the North Sea and considered how these could be managed more effectively.

This comprehensive analysis of North Sea helicopter operations and safety performance proposes a series of actions and makes a number of important recommendations for the industry. The focus is now on managing the changes arising from the report in a considered and systematic way.

Although focused on oil and gas operations in the North Sea, the Review has indirect relevance for offshore Search and Rescue (SAR) too and will arguably be of interest to other offshore oil and gas locations around the world.

The Review contains 32 Actions which the UK CAA have committed to but more widely 29 Recommendations. Of these, 13 are to EASA, 12 to the Helicopter Industry (AOC Holders, MROs, ATOs and manufacturers), 3 to the oil and gas industry and one collectively to all three of these

Read the full report

WestJet Selects TechPubs

WestJet Selects TechPubs:

5 of the top 10 Airlines in North America Now A Customer of TechPubs Global

TechPubs Global, Longmont, CO January 22nd, 2014; TechPubs Global is pleased to announce its newest client, WestJet.  WestJet is one of five of the Top Ten North American airlines to select TechPubs’ TechSuite solution for their comprehensive technical publications and compliance management requirements in the past eight months.

With this award, TechPubs Global‘s TechSuite solution has become the preferred airline content management solution in Canada.  Version 4.4 of the TechSuite solution has been released, and will be implemented at WestJet over the next few months.

Click here to find more information on how TechSuite version 4.4 can help airlines, like WestJet, efficiently manage their manuals and regulatory compliance.

Annex 19 – The Next Steps in Proactive Safety Management

Annex 19 – The Next Steps in Proactive Safety Management

By Danielle Kelly

Sextant Readings Solutions - SMS ICAO Annex 19For the first time in 30 years, ICAO are set to release a new Annex – Annex 19 – that pulls together current safety management practices and future expectations for facilitating safety risks that exist in our lands and skies.

The Annex looks to promote and enhance the alignment between the state and service providers and operators, which in my opinion should be welcomed and can only be a positive thing. Sharing and learning from each other is good, it’s what we are taught as kids and is something we would do well to remember as adults. ICAO have provided us with Annex after Annex of standards and regulations depicting how things should be done in the industry, with lots of references to safety for operation of aircraft, air traffic services, aerodromes, and airworthiness. This new Annex brings together all of these different provisions to further embed safety oversight and systemic risk sharing, but shouldn’t we be doing this already anyway?

There is a lot of emphasis on the management of safety risks, focusing on what we don’t want to happen, and on the sharing of information. However, how worthwhile the sharing of information actually is depends on what is done with it. ICAO appear to be providing an answer to bridging the gap between simply being aware of other industry incidents and proactively managing and implementing further mitigation strategies to prevent the same thing from occurring on our own watch. But why has it taken a new Annex to be published for us to do this, shouldn’t this be something we should be doing as part of working practice? How do organizations learn and share?

It seems ICAO have produced this Annex to show that it is no longer acceptable just to Prevent, Detect and Respond; we need to be able to learn and share information, particularly as the demand for air travel increases. To that end, ICAO has offered greater support for the next generation of safety management systems. The co-ordination effort being established between State Safety Programs (SSP) and the SMS provides an opportunity to improve the performance of the existing SMS to meet state safety policies and objectives, state safety risk management, assurance and promotion.

Like I said before, we can no longer be seen just to be preventing, detecting and responding to occurrences. Learning isn’t just about reporting, understanding, implementing and then backtracking; it’s much more than that – learning is the sharing of knowledge and information, so let’s get more information about our controls instead of the outcomes.  How about we manage the precursor and build our resilience?

Now, it’s all very well saying this but how do we actually achieve it?

Well, we need to start somewhere…so how about our controls? Do we have confidence in our controls?  If not, why not? And what do we do about it to make sure we are confident in the controls in place?

Yes, States play a role to establish and prescribe a State Safety Program in order for us to achieve an acceptable level of safety. However, it is up to the service providers and operators who fundamentally need to demonstrate and actively manage risk and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies through their own Safety Management Systems.

So, where do we go with Annex 19?

Well, we have to make time to look at what we’ve got; we know an SMS will give us the means to do everything we need to do and to be able do them effectively in terms of manage hazards and associated risks, log incidents and occurrences to be able to report on performance. There will no doubt be policies and procedures with associated workflows that are required to be followed to ensure the investigation is appropriately dealt with.

With Annex 19, we need more than this. We need a platform to not only do all the things we need to do, but also all the things we want to do; such as anticipating and predicting, strengthening our position and giving us confidence in our controls. Because if we’re not doing that…well…in the eyes of Annex 19…are we doing it wrong?

How does your SMS measure up against the new Annex 19 recommendations?

Finland’s transport regulator increases efficiency and improves reporting times to ECCAIRS

Finland’s transport regulator increases efficiency and improves reporting times to ECCAIRS

TraFiThe Traffic Analysis department of the Finnish Transport Safety Agency (TraFi) is involved in the collection and analysis of safety and environment information regarding Finland’s transport system. As part of their reporting obligations, the regulator is required to submit both accident and incident reports to the European Co-ordination Centre for Accident and Incident Reporting Systems (ECCAIRS).

However, cialis after recording high and continuously increasing aviation occurrence reports, mainly down to their limited resources, the regulator identified a need to increase the efficiency of their occurrence management process, improving reporting times to ECCAIRS.

Ossi Kasurinen, TraFi’s Safety Information Adviser, said: “Saving occurrence reports manually into ECCAIRS database requires a lot of work and was extremely labor intensive at times, especially as we have limited resource in which to do it. We required a solution that would help us to streamline our occurrence report management process as well as feed the ECCAIRS database more efficiently.”

TraFi develops safety of the transport system across Finland, promoting environmentally friendly transport solutions. It is responsible for transport system regulatory duties across the four main transport sectors of air, rail, land and sea, and so it was crucial they found a solution which would improve their occurrence management and analysis processes.

With Ideagen Gael’s Q-Pulse solution, TraFi benefit from a fully integrated safety occurrence reporting and incident management solution, allowing their aviation community to raise occurrences in multiple formats before being processed directly into Q-Pulse.

The regulator also use Q-Pulse for their safety data management and enjoy seamless and automated integration with the ECCAIRS database which has streamlined their previous manual processes to provide more effective safety oversight of Finnish Civil and General Aviation.

Ossi added: “Q-Pulse is customizable and makes it possible to import and export data from and to other systems, cutting down the manual process dramatically. As our data is stored in Q-Pulse, we will be able to analyses it using the solution and, as the solutions is used by a few of our aviation customers, there may be possibilities that we can experience some synergy benefits in data transfer also.”

“Our Q-Pulse solution has completely taken over our day-to-day operations in regards to managing safety and environment information. As well as receiving multiple occurrence reports from varying systems, we can manage and classify these reports before easily exporting them into ECCAIRS. It has helped us improve overall occurrence management – and the solution’s analysis functionality will help us fulfill our duties despite the limited resources that we have.”

Audit – Positive or Negative connotation in your operation?

Posted by Fiona Macintyre on Mon, Aug 26, 2013

Audit.  A small but highly significant word.  A word that can illicit so much fear and dread throughout an organization.  There is an automatic negative response to the thought of an audit, it’s seen as something negative, something designed by those in authority just to catch you out.  It is easy to see audit as a negative if it is viewed in this way or as just another tick box exercise designed by authorities.

An audit can be conducted internally, by an external regulatory body or by a supplier.  Regardless of who is conducting the audit, all employees need to be on board with the audit process.  To do so, an organization needs to turn any negativity on its’ head and have an audit seen as a positive.  That means all employees adhering to standard working practices at all times and not just for the audit.

So how does any organization turn negativity and doubt into positivity?  This may be one of the hardest things any organization will do.  Indeed, in any walk of life there will always be those that are negative for the sake of it and will never see a positive in anything, ‘every silver lining has a cloud’!

Company culture can contribute greatly to all employees being on board in an audit process.  How do management convey to their staff that an audit isn’t designed to find out what they are not doing and pull them up for it but rather it is designed to highlight areas across a business that are working well in an attempt to replicate those across the rest of the business?  Highlight the positives and identify the areas that require focus, while also conveying that this is ultimately for the good of the business and subsequently for them as employees.  Organizations successful in doing this have an established learning and sharing culture.  In practice this is not an easy culture to create.

There are many benefits in the audit process that should be promoted.  In terms of aviation, these benefits extend to how the audit process is built into the overall Safety Management System.  An effective and efficient SMS is underpinned by System Safety principles and Quality Management and a large part of that is audit management.

Audits ensure all policies and procedures are working, to verify that processes adhere to standards and regulations and to maintain a level of competency.  Performed regularly, audits contribute to complying with regulatory standards as well as identifying shortfalls and areas of improvement.  Audit Management provides a closed loop system from scheduling, planning, conducting and following up of audits in a manner that supports organization-wide improvement.

The key point in the above statement is – “supports organization-wide improvement.”  Promoting that fact can turn the negative views of an audit into a positive.  By that, I mean ensuring that people understand the reasons for the audit, everyone is on board and fully appreciate the importance of auditing to improve all areas of the business and ultimately as a result reduce their suspicions that the audit is merely performed to catch them out.

To achieve this goal, an open learning and sharing corporate culture is required.  That has to be organization wide and that comes from the top down and vice versa.

In conclusion, it is the culture of an organization that dictates whether employees will view the audit process in a positive light or not.  In saying that, there is no accounting for the naturally negative minded people in life and it wouldn’t matter what type of corporate culture they were working under – they will always moan regardless and I have no answer for getting them on board – that’s a completely different topic.

MegaMacs Oil and Fuel Tank Cleaning

MegaMacs Oil and Fuel Tank Cleaning

With our partner, Enviromacs International, we specialize in safe, efficient, cost-effective oil and aviation fuel storage tank cleaning.  No job is too big or too small for our highly trained team. Our state-of-the-art mobile tank cleaning equipment can easily handle tanks of any size, from smaller strategic tanks to the largest industrial reserve storage tanks.  Known in the industry for its flexibility, our oil and fuel tank cleaning system can be adapted easily to meet all of your tank cleaning needs.

Contact Enviromacs today to learn why we are the right choice for your oil or aviation fuel tank cleaning project.

Advantages

By choosing Enviromacs to complete your oil or fuel tank cleaning job, you can feel confident that your project will be executed safely and quickly, all while saving you time and money.

Save Time

Cleaning time is drastically lowered through use of the MegaMacs tank cleaning system.   For example, we can clean a 750,000 bbl capacity tank with a 1000 cubic meter volume of sludge in less than 28 days.

Save Money

The mobility and efficiency of the MegaMacs oil and aviation fuel tank cleaning system equates to significant time and money savings.

Minimize Environmental Impact

We protect the environment by using minimal water and cleaning solution during the cleaning process and by producing cleaner solids than traditional sludge removal services.

Cleaning Process

First,the MegaMacs system pressure washes heat-exchanged (180 degrees Fahrenheit) cleaning liquids using hydraulic pumps. The resulting waste fluid and sludge are pumped into the MegaMacs system, where the oil and water are separated from the solids.  The water is reused for cleaning, while the solids are extracted and the oil is reclaimed. At least 95 percent of the oil becomes a sellable product.

Railcar Tank Cleaning

Railcar Tank Cleaning

Whether you are transporting oil or molasses, gasoline or fertilizer, you know that it is essential to maintain a pristine tank to ensure the integrity of the products you are carrying. Enviromacs International offers food-grade tank wash as well as hazardous and non-hazardous railcar tank cleaning services that help your company keep fleet sizes down and profit margins up.

Contact Enviromacs today to learn why you should choose our company to handle your railcar tank cleaning project.

Advantages

We provide unparalleled service to companies specializing in railroad transportation and offer a number of advantages over our competition, including the following:

Faster Turnaround

We reduce loss of car inventory for your company by getting your equipment ready for the next load faster. The efficiency of the equipment we use allows us to speed through the cleaning process while achieving optimal results.

Green Cleaning

All of the equipment we use is designed to comply with EPA regulations. Our railcar tank cleaning system is equipped with a gas filtering and cleansing unit that reduces vapor output. Because our equipment can recover valuable oil and other products during the washing process, the amount of waste product is reduced.

Cost Savings

We reduce the cost of cleaning your fleet through quick turnover and increased efficiency. Because our railcar tank cleaning system meets US government requirements, we can help your company prevent penalties for lack of compliance with environmental regulations.

Dassault to expand Little Rock completion centre

By:   Dave Majumdar Washington DC

12:00 3 Jun 2013 Source:FLIGHT

Dassault is planning to expand its completion center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in anticipation of the company’s new Falcon SMS business jet, which will be unveiled later this year.

“Our next step in the Falcon family is an airplane – the code name is SMS – and that’s really why we needed to extend our presence here,” says John Rosanvallon, president and chief executive of Dassault‘s Falcon Jet division. “This brand new Falcon will be introduced at the next NBAA [National Business Aviation Association] convention in Las Vegas [Nevada] in October and we believe it will be the best Falcon yet.”

Over the next three years, Rosanvallon says Dassault will invest $60 million in new construction and the refurbishment of its existing facilities in Little Rock.

The construction will add 250,000 sq ft (23,225 sq m) to the factory’s 1 million sq ft of floor space. The project will also include refurbishments of the cabinet, upholstery and headliner shops and upgrades to older hangars.

Site preparation for the work will start in early 2014 and construction will be undertaken through the early part of 2016.

 

Sextant Readings Solutions – aviation professionals with a focus on Safety and Risk Management, Quality Management and Quality Assurance, and Compliance for the Aviation Industry.  Sextant Readings Solutions is an IS-BAO Support Services Affiliate, IS-BAO safety consultant, and Auditor.  Ideagen Gael Limited recognizes Sextant Readings Solutions as the authorized re-seller of Q-Pulse®, Ideagen Gael Risk® and MindGenius® for aviation for the Americas.