Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) has been a part of Safety Management Systems (SMS) in the fixed wing industry for many years. FDM is now becoming a contractual requirement in helicopter operations as far as oil companies are concerned. In the future it may be mandated by authorities. From a technical point of view, FDM is similar HUMS. FDM is a ground-station based system that is used to play back flight data to assess how the aircraft is flown and operated. Flight data is recorded by the HUMS. The ground-station is configured to flag any discrepancy relative to both published limitations as well as operator customized parameters.
FDM can be run as an in-house service including all processing, or in a combination of an external processing service and in-house assessment. In either case, ACS can facilitate the setup of an FDM program.
