Aviation SMS Software: How ASR and FDM Work Together

How Sky Analyst ASR and Sky Analyst FDM work together in a high-functioning Safety Management System

A pilot files an air safety report after an unstable approach. The narrative says the aircraft was “a little high and fast inside 1,000 feet.” Somewhere else in the company, the flight data monitoring program flagged the same approach as a speed exceedance. In many operations, those two records never meet.

The safety officer has to hunt for the flight, match timestamps, export data from one system and attach it to another. Often that never happens, and the report gets closed on the narrative alone.

That gap is one of the most common weaknesses in an aviation Safety Management System (SMS). The best aviation SMS software closes it by putting the crew’s account and the aircraft’s recorded data in the same place. This post explains why that matters and how Sky Analyst ASR and Sky Analyst FDM are built to do it.

What an aviation SMS actually needs from its data

Every aviation SMS framework — ICAO Annex 19, FAA 14 CFR Part 5, Transport Canada CARs, EASA’s ORO.GEN, and the IS-BAO standard for business aviation — rests on the same four components:

Safety policy and objectives — leadership commitment, accountabilities and safety goals.
Safety risk management — identifying hazards and assessing and mitigating the risks they pose.
Safety assurance — monitoring safety performance, measuring it against safety performance indicators (SPIs) and checking that mitigations work.
Safety promotion — training, communication and a reporting culture.

The middle two are where software earns its keep. Hazard identification depends on getting information in, and safety assurance depends on measuring what is actually happening on the line. Both are only as good as the data behind them.

The pressure to get this right is growing. The FAA’s 2024 final rule extended Part 5 SMS to Part 135 on-demand and commuter operators, commercial air tour operators under 91.147 and certain Part 21 holders, and they must submit a declaration of compliance by May 28, 2027. Inspectors are already asking operators for evidence that their SMS is working, not just written down. For airlines, ICAO already expects a flight data analysis programme as part of the SMS for larger aeroplanes, and EASA is widening FDM requirements from 2028.

Two halves of the same picture: safety reports and flight data

Air safety reports and flight data monitoring answer different questions, and a strong SMS needs both.

	Air safety reports (ASR)	Flight data monitoring (FDM / FOQA)
What it captures	The human account: what the crew saw, felt, decided and why	The objective record: airspeed, altitude, attitude, configuration, G-load, every flight
Strength	Context, intent, threats outside the aircraft, near misses no sensor detects	Completeness and precision; no reliance on someone choosing to report
Blind spot	Depends on people reporting, and on memory under stress	Shows what happened, rarely why on its own
SMS role	Hazard identification, reporting culture	Safety assurance, SPIs, trend monitoring

On its own, a safety report can overstate or understate an event. On its own, an FDM exceedance can look alarming with no explanation (just look at Long Landings for an example). Put together, the safety team sees what happened, why it happened, and whether it is a one-off or a pattern across the fleet.

This is also how you test whether your reporting culture is healthy. If FDM shows dozens of unstable approaches a month and almost nobody is filing reports about them, that gap is itself a safety finding.

How Sky Analyst ASR and FDM work together

Sky Analyst ASR is aviation safety reporting software built by a flight data company. It runs on the same database and the same platform as Sky Analyst FDM, so a safety report and the flight it describes are never more than a click apart. Here is what that looks like from report to resolution.

The report gets filed — anywhere. Crew and staff submit flight safety reports, general safety reports or your own custom report types through the web or the Sky Analyst mobile app. The app works offline; a report written in cruise is pushed to the database as soon as the device reconnects. Lowering the effort to report is the single biggest lever on reporting culture.
The flight data is already there. Flight data is typically processed and available in Sky Analyst FDM within minutes of upload, not days. By the time the safety officer opens the report, the recorded data for that flight is ready to review.
The report is linked to the occurrence flight. The reviewer links the ASR to the flight and checks the narrative against recorded parameters such as airspeed, altitude and vertical speed — without leaving the report.
Evidence is attached, not exported. Charts, tables and a PDF of the FDM analysis are saved directly to the safety report. No downloading from one system and uploading to another.
The event is replayed in 3D. A 3D flight animation of the reported event is the fastest way to brief a safety committee or debrief a crew on what actually happened.
Reports and exceedances are trended together. Because ASR and FDM share one database, safety reports can be analysed alongside FDM events across the fleet. Is a rise in hard-landing reports matched by actual accelerometer data? Are unstable-approach reports concentrated at one airport, one type or one season?

Example: Three crews report a “firm arrival” at the same airport over two months. On their own, those are three subjective reports. Linked to FDM, the safety team can see whether vertical acceleration at touchdown is genuinely trending up there, and whether non-reporting crews show the same pattern. That is the difference between a hunch and a documented hazard with evidence.

Why this is different. Many safety reporting tools are good digital filing cabinets. Some can import FDM event information. Very few were designed from the start around flight data, by people who have spent decades running FDM and FOQA programs. Sky Analyst ASR was.

From individual reports to safety assurance

A high-functioning SMS doesn’t just process reports one at a time. It measures whether the operation is getting safer. That is safety assurance, and it runs on safety performance indicators.

With safety reports and flight data in one application, Sky Analyst gives the safety manager a consolidated view of KPIs and SPIs drawn from both sources. Useful indicators to track side by side include:

Unstable approach rate (FDM) against unstable approach reports filed (ASR)
Long landing and runway-remaining events against near runway excursion or overrun reports
Hard landing events by acceleration against hard landing reports
TCAS RA, EGPWS and bank-angle events against the corresponding crew reports
Report volume per 1,000 flights, as a measure of reporting culture

For the safety review board, this means fewer slides assembled by hand and more evidence on the table. For the accountable executive, it means being able to show a regulator or auditor that hazards are identified, risks are tracked and mitigations are working.

Operators that join Scaled Analytics’ Global Data Sharing (GDS) program can also benchmark their FDM event rates against de-identified data from other operators, so an SPI target is grounded in what peers actually achieve.

Who Sky Analyst ASR is built for

Sky Analyst ASR is designed for operators who want a working SMS without an enterprise-sized software project:

Small and mid-sized airlines that need FOQA and safety reporting to support an ICAO- or regulator-accepted SMS
Business jet and charter operators (Part 135, CARs 704/705, EASA NCC/CAT, IS-BAO) building or maturing an SMS, including those facing the FAA’s May 2027 Part 5 deadline
Helicopter operators, including offshore and air medical, running HFDM alongside safety reporting

Operators can start with FDM, with ASR, or with both. Most of the value described here comes from running them together.

What to look for in aviation SMS software

If you are comparing aviation safety management system software, these questions separate tools that support a functioning SMS from tools that only store forms:

Does it connect to your flight data, or just import a list of events? A reviewer should be able to open the actual flight from inside the report.
How fast is flight data available? Minutes versus days changes whether data is used during a report review or after it is closed.
Is reporting easy enough that people will actually do it? Look for a mobile app, offline reporting and short, customizable forms.
Can you trend reports and FDM events together? Safety assurance needs both sources on the same dashboard.
Who built it? Safety software built by flight data specialists behaves differently from a generic compliance or EHS platform adapted to aviation.
Where is your data hosted, and who owns it? Ask about data centres, security certifications, retention and what happens at contract end.
Is it sized for your operation? A system built for a 300-aircraft airline can bury a 30-aircraft operator in configuration and cost.

Frequently asked questions

What is aviation SMS software? Aviation SMS software is a digital system that helps an operator run its Safety Management System: collecting safety reports, identifying hazards, tracking risks and measuring safety performance. The most effective systems also connect to flight data monitoring (FDM/FOQA), so safety reports can be checked against what the aircraft actually recorded.

What is an air safety report (ASR)? An air safety report is a report filed by a pilot, crew member or other employee describing a safety-related event, hazard or concern. ASRs are a core source of hazard identification in an aviation SMS.

Why integrate safety reporting with flight data monitoring? Safety reports explain why something happened; flight data shows exactly what happened. Integrating them lets safety teams verify reports with objective evidence, trend reports against FDM events, and spot hazards that one source alone would miss.

What is Sky Analyst ASR? Sky Analyst ASR is aviation safety reporting software from Scaled Analytics, a Canadian aviation software company based in Ottawa. It is fully integrated with Sky Analyst FDM on a shared database, so safety reports can be linked to flight data, charts, PDFs and 3D animations in a single application. It includes custom report templates, consolidated FDM and ASR dashboards, and a mobile app that supports offline reporting.

Does Sky Analyst help with FAA Part 5 SMS compliance for Part 135 operators? Software alone does not make an operator compliant; the SMS is the operator’s. Sky Analyst ASR and FDM support the hazard identification and safety assurance components of Part 5 by capturing safety reports and providing objective flight data and SPIs to show the SMS is working.

Which operators use Sky Analyst? Scaled Analytics serves 100+ active FDM customers with 350+ aircraft, including small and mid-sized airlines, cargo operators, business jet and charter operators, and helicopter operators worldwide. It supports most western-built aircraft with ARINC 717/767 recorders or avionics that export CSV data.

Where is Sky Analyst hosted? Sky Analyst runs on Microsoft Azure in Canadian data centres. It is web-based, so there is no software to install apart from the optional mobile app.

See your safety reports and flight data in one place

An SMS is only as strong as the evidence behind its decisions. When every safety report can be checked against the flight that produced it, investigations get faster, trends get clearer, and the safety committee spends its time on real hazards instead of chasing data.

If you are setting up an SMS, preparing for an FAA Part 5 or IS-BAO audit, or tired of matching pilot reports to flight data by hand, we’d be glad to show you how Sky Analyst ASR and FDM work together on your own type of operation.

Request a demo · Explore Sky Analyst ASR features · Learn about Sky Analyst FDM

Aviation SMS Software That Connects Safety Reports to Flight Data