Metro Aviation of Shreveport, Louisiana is reaping the rewards of implementing a Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) programme, which utilises Outerlink IRIS FDM flight data monitoring. Since the approval of the company's FDM programme and FOQA in May 2017, its safety department has reviewed more than 48,000 events, with an additional 14,000 events having been reviewed prior to official FAA approval.

As a result of the programme, the company has been able to serve its customers with a high degree of oversight, control and confidence that risk is reduced to the lowest possible point and safety and standardisation are at a high level. Metro has created a set of operational benchmarks and, by aggregating data, the safety department has been able to identify and make recommendations to procedures that need additional training or guidance, and resulting in changes to Metro's operations, training manoeuvres and manuals.

“We believe that the changes we've made have played a large part in the nearly 20 per cent year-over-year decrease in the number of events flagged by our FOQA programme,” says MD Milton Geltz.

By the end of this year, Metro's entire fleet will be equipped with Outerlink IRIS flight data monitoring equipment. Currently, 82 per cent of its aircraft are equipped with FDM capabilities, with more than 90 of those aircraft equipped with Outerlink's IRIS system.

In addition to flagging events, the data provided by the FDM systems has also been used to perform in-depth studies and give the leadership team insight into the company's operations such as fuel usage and maintenance issues. The systems have provided valuable assistance to the maintenance department through the validation or refutation of exceedances flagged by the aircraft. The higher recording rate of the IRIS system allows Metro to get a better picture of the severity of an exceedance than what an onboard VEMD (Vehicle Electronic Monitoring Display) can provide.

Real-time monitoring is also available through cautions and alerts viewed by the operational control centre, allowing specialists to offer assistance over the IRIS satcom system.