Texas-headquartered Air Center Helicopters has become the first North American operator to subscribe to Safran Helicopter's upgraded premium health monitoring service, available for Support By the Hour customers, that uses predictive analyses and preventive maintenance to preserve customers' engines and optimise operations.

First launched two years ago, the service enables customers to track their engines' health indicator and the premium version now has features such as daily health indicators; full automation of the engine performance trend follow-up; and a new user-friendly online interface. The service is based on more than 60 engine parameters that are converted into indicators through algorithms, and recommendations are tailored to the customer's operational configuration.