Since its launch in August, Argus International’s Prism SMS (safety management system) has been well-received. Travis Kuhn, senior v-p of software at Argus, told AIN that the continued aviation customer migration, even though it is a posh process, has progressed easily.
“We have had a whole lot of positive feedback specifically surrounding our safety intelligence features within the system,” he noted. “The power to have the opportunity to take a look at the trending information of your individual internal reports, how your organization is trending in real time, has been a excellent feature for us.”
Argus expects to see more subscribers all year long, especially with the changes to FAR Part 5, which covers safety management systems, expected this yr.
Kuhn confirmed plans to integrate Prism SMS with other software—corresponding to flight duty scheduling and maintenance tracking—after completing customer migration in the following few months. The system is designed to be fully adaptable to user preferences, allowing aviation organizations to tailor every little thing from dashboard visuals to module selection. This approach caters to the evolving demand for personalized technology solutions within the aerospace sector.
Safety stays a spotlight, with Prism SMS meeting the complete requirements of an efficient SMS. The platform’s flexibility and customization options play a critical role in enhancing its effectiveness. “We focused heavily on constructing this method in a way that makes it customizable to the user,” in line with Kuhn.
Discussing business aviation flight activity trends for January 2024, Kuhn noted a stabilization and cooling after the post-Covid surge. The Part 135 market, which saw an influx of recent entrants during Covid, has experienced probably the most significant pullback. “We’re seeing less leisure travel within the industry, which is why I feel we’re seeing a few of those numbers pull back from those post-Covid highs,” he told AIN.
“We’re expecting numbers overall by the top of 2024 for business aviation movements to be off about 1 percent in North America. I feel that may probably hold true unless some significant external variable swings it by some means. Now, on the helicopter side, it’s a unique story.”
He pointed to global helicopter activity, which was up by 19.9 percent in 2023 in comparison with 2022. The European market increased by roughly 10 percent, and the North American market was up by about 7.5 percent.
Kuhn noted that the helicopter data “shouldn’t be as well covered as our fixed-wing data because we overwhelmingly are IFR flight plans, which most of these business jets are on, and it isn’t all the time the case with helicopters. For what we do track, it’s definitely a trend that appears to be indicative of all of the news we’re hearing that is already coming out to this point at Heli-Expo, [including] the Allied Market Research (AMR) report that talked concerning the growth within the Asia-Pacific region of 10 percent from heavy lift helicopters. So that you’re seeing that double-digit growth in a few of these areas world wide.”
He also mentioned Safran’s goal of delivering greater than 1,000 engines in 2025 and Airbus’ report that the helicopter market was the best across their portfolio. “It definitely points to having a powerful [rotorcraft] market that is growing,” he said.