Airline audit

An Airline audit is generally performed in case of code sharing or wet-lease. Wet-lease is normally based on a so-called ACMI agreement. The abbreviation stands for Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance. These matters are taken care of by the lessor. All other matters have to be taken care of by the lessee.

The lessee has the obligation to convince himself that the lessor meets all legal requirements. This obligation is fulfilled by performing an Airline audit.

The Airline audit contains all aspects of the operation such as flight safety, operational control, flight crew, cabin crew, ground handling, maintenance and quality assurance.

During the Airline audit a verification can also be made if the lessor meets all possible requirements for the type of operation of the lessee. This check can be made by means of the approvals on the Air Operator Certificate (AOC) and the associated procedures.

Special components of the Airline audit are aircraft inspections and one or more observation flights to assess the performance of cockpit- and cabin crew.

An Airline audit is normally carried out by a team of specialists under the supervision of a lead-auditor, who controls the audit. This lead-auditor can be provided by AviationAudits.nl. The remaining members of the team can be for example a pilot, a technician and an operations controller. These specialists do not need to have a brought audit experience, although this is of course an advantage.

AviationAudits.nl is able to perform Airline audits at small airlines without assistance.

For this type of audit a special Airline audit checklist is used, possibly with addition of the checklists for flight deck and cabin observation flights.  All these checklists are generic and can therefore be used for every airline.