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 ongoing aviation customer migration, although it is a complex process, has progressed smoothly.
“We've had a lot of positive feedback specifically surrounding our safety intelligence features in the system,” he noted. “The ability to be able to look at the trending information of your own internal reports, how your company is trending in real time, has been a very good feature for us.”
Argus expects to see more subscribers throughout the year, especially with the changes to FAR Part 5, which covers safety management systems, expected this year.
Kuhn confirmed plans to integrate Prism SMS with other software—such as flight duty scheduling and maintenance tracking—after completing customer migration in the next few months. The system is designed to be fully adaptable to user preferences, allowing aviation organizations to tailor everything from dashboard visuals to module selection. This approach caters to the evolving demand for personalized technology solutions in the aerospace sector.
Safety remains a focus, with Prism SMS meeting the full requirements of an effective SMS. The platform's flexibility and customization options play a critical role in enhancing its effectiveness. “We focused heavily on building this system in a way that makes it customizable to the user,” according to 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 new entrants during Covid, has experienced the most significant pullback. “We're seeing less leisure travel in the industry, which is why I think we're seeing some of those numbers pull back from those post-Covid highs,” he told AIN.
“We're expecting numbers overall by the end of 2024 for business aviation movements to be off about 1 percent in North America. I think that will probably hold true unless some significant external variable swings it one way or the other. Now, on the helicopter side, it's a different story.”
He pointed to global helicopter activity, which was up by 19.9 percent in 2023 compared to 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 “is not as well covered as our fixed-wing data because we overwhelmingly are looking at IFR flight plans, which almost all these business jets are on, and it's not always the case with helicopters. For what we do track, it's certainly a trend that seems to be indicative of all the news we're hearing that's already coming out so far at Heli-Expo, [including] the Allied Market Research (AMR) report that talked about the growth in the Asia-Pacific region of 10 percent from heavy lift helicopters. So you're seeing that double-digit growth in some of these areas around the world.”
He also mentioned Safran’s goal of delivering more than 1,000 engines in 2025 and Airbus’ report that the helicopter market was the highest across their portfolio. “It definitely points to having a strong [rotorcraft] market that's growing,” he said.