Wyvern is now an approved auditing company for the Air Charter Safety Foundation (ACSF) Industry Audit Standard (IAS). The approval allows charter operators and fractional ownership programme managers to accomplish a single audit that combines both the ACSF IAS and the Wyvern Wingman Standard.

Under the terms of the approval Wyvern now offers an IAS module as an add-on to its proprietary Wyvern Audit Standard. The IAS module contains 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 Wyvern standard, including the IAS module, receive the Wyvern Wingman rating and become ACSF Registered.

Both ACSF and Wyvern believe this will be a win-win relationship for charter operators and fractional programme managers as it will reduce the operational risk and redundant workload associated with multiple audits. The two standards complement each other in that the Wyvern Wingman Standard has become a recognised 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 to assist the commercial business aviation marketplace in achieving safety metrics found in the US airline marketplace.

ACSF chairman Mike Graham says: "The Air Charter Safety Foundation IAS recognises that the scheduled airline community has demonstrated the best safety record in the aviation industry. ACSF accreditation is awarded to a Part 135 operator or fractional manager that is utilising 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 ACSF and Wyvern have been able to bring this programme to the marketplace through a single on-site audit event, thereby accomplishing an objective that is core to the mission statement of the ACSF."

Wyvern president and CEO Sonnie Bates adds: "Wyvern Wingman has for years now represented the most sought-after rating by charter consumers around the world, but we recognise that while some operators require or desire compliance with other standards they dread the thought of the time and money associated with multiple audit events. Wyvern is very pleased to cooperate with the ACSF on its IAS initiative and happy to once again uniquely offer the marketplace the ability to perform one audit event with an outcome pertinent to both Wingman 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."