Flight Safety Foundation's Basic Aviation Risk Standard (BARS) programme is now using video conferencing to continue operating and provide safety confidence to contracted flight crews and passengers, enabling vital contracted repatriation and humanitarian flights to be kept in the skies during COVID-19 border lockdowns through remote monitoring and virtual safety audits.

BARS programme managing director David Anderson says the need for the standard to evolve had never been more pertinent in its 10-year mission of getting people home safely than right now. “BARS is a collaborative industry initiative that amalgamates and shares safety audit information between members to promote safety among companies globally,” he comments. “In a global crisis situation like COVID-19, we are continuing to ensure standards are met for businesses and governments contracting aircraft and to help aircraft operators meet compliance obligations remotely.”

The new remote monitoring and virtual safety audits exemplifies the BARS programme's leadership in the contract aviation industry and evolution over the past decade, prior to which there were no clear benchmarks for companies to assess the safety of owned or outsourced air operations.

Because organisations with BARS membership share audit information, they also share the cost of auditing, with subscriptions to the globally recognised standard costing $50,000 instead of incurring independent contract aircraft audit costs, which could exceed $3 million annually. As part of BARS's ongoing commitment to the safety of contracted aircraft and the aviation industry, the Flight Safety Foundation is subsidising remote monitoring fees.

Created by the Flight Safety Foundation in collaboration with some of the world's largest resource and mining companies, the programme provides more efficient safety risk monitoring, assessing and analysing of contracted operators.

“Without the BARS programme and now our remote monitoring and virtual safety audit solutions, companies in a range of different sectors would need to wait months in the current climate for an auditor to be able to physically travel to conduct an assessment of an aircraft operator,” Anderson continues. “We are proud to be part of global effort to bring people home safely now more than ever before in our 10 year history.”