The Operating System for Modern Heliports
The safety management system for heliports — hazard identification, guided risk assessment, corrective actions and audit-ready records, built on the ICAO framework and designed for the people who run the site.
One system of record for the entire heliport operation
Heliport operators run hazard identification, risk assessment, and corrective actions across spreadsheets, paper checklists, and disconnected tools. When an audit or an incident investigation happens, the evidence is scattered across people, not systems.
Heliport OS replaces that fragmentation with a single operational record — built for daily use by the people running the heliport, and ready for the auditor, the regulator, or the investigator on day one.
Why heliport SMS is changing
ICAO Annex 14, Volume II introduces heliport certification as a Standard, applicable from 26 November 2026. Where it applies, the certification process requires the operator to submit a heliport manual covering the site, its facilities and equipment, its operational procedures, and its organisation and management — including a safety management system.
How and when this reaches any individual heliport depends on the State. Each civil aviation authority adopts ICAO provisions on its own timeline, with its own scope and its own national requirements. Some heliports will be certified; others will not. The right question is not whether a deadline applies to you, but whether your operation can show, at any point, how safety is being managed.
There is a second gap worth knowing about. ICAO's own heliport guidance — Doc 9261, the Heliport Manual — reserves its sections on heliport certification and safety management systems with a single line: "To be completed in due course." Sector-specific SMS guidance for heliports does not currently exist. Existing guidance for aerodromes, such as Doc 9981, is written for aeroplane operations and states so explicitly.
Heliport OS is built in that gap: the ICAO safety management framework, structured for heliports and for the people who actually run them.
Everything a heliport needs to operate safely
Safety Management System
Hazards, consequences, risk assessments and mitigations in one continuous register. The system guides the assessment, calculates the risk index, and routes the decision to whoever has the authority to make it.
Guided Risk Assessment
The person using it answers plain questions — how often has something like this happened here, what is the worst that could realistically follow. The system handles the ICAO probability and severity scales, and blocks an intolerable risk from being filed without mitigation.
Occurrence Reporting
Structured reporting for unsafe conditions, unsafe practices, near misses, incidents and accidents. Confidential by default, with the reporter's identity restricted to the designated data custodian — and with feedback to the reporter built into the workflow, not left to memory.
Corrective and Preventive Actions
Every mitigation, audit finding, drill lesson and meeting decision produces an action with a named owner, a due date, and evidence required to close it. Verification is done by someone other than the person who completed the work.
Digital Checklists and Inspections
Daily, weekly and monthly checklists built for gloved hands and small screens. A failed item becomes a hazard or an action in one tap, instead of a note nobody reads again.
Safety Performance Indicators
The system calculates indicators from the data already being collected. Reporting-rate indicators are tracked as trends without targets, because a target on a reporting rate distorts the behaviour it is meant to measure.
Emergency Response
Scenario action cards, agency contacts and mutual aid agreements in one place, accessible offline from a phone. Review and exercise intervals are tracked against the requirements in Annex 14, Volume II.
Safeguarding and Obstacles
A record of obstacles, penetrated surfaces, and proposed developments in the surrounding area — assessed across airspace, lighting, wildlife, construction interference and obstacle collision.
Management of Change
Changes are triaged automatically. Routine tasks with established feedback pass through; those without it, and changes affecting infrastructure, procedures, equipment or key personnel, require a safety assessment before implementation.
Evidence and Records
Every hazard, assessment, action, indicator, training record and meeting minute is versioned and retained. Exportable as a single dossier when the inspector arrives.
What it looks like in use
Risk assessment, without the jargon
The person filing an assessment never sees "Hazardous / B". They answer how often something like this has happened, and what the worst realistic outcome would be. The system does the translation, produces the risk index, and applies the tolerability matrix.
How often has something like this happened here?
Index 3C — tolerable
An intolerable risk cannot simply be filed
Where the assessment lands in the intolerable range, the system will not save it without mitigation. It offers the three ICAO strategies — avoidance, reduction, segregation — and requires a residual assessment afterwards.
This risk cannot be saved until a mitigation is assigned.
A residual risk assessment is required after mitigation is applied.
Every action has an owner, a date, and evidence
Actions arrive from seven different places in the system and land in one board. Overdue actions escalate. Closing one requires evidence, and verification by someone other than the person who did the work.
Verification must be performed by someone other than the assignee.
Built around five operational requirements
Hazards are logged continuously, not reconstructed before an audit
Every hazard, its consequences, and its status stay in one register from the day it's reported, not rebuilt from memory when an audit is announced.
Risk assessment is guided, not left to individual judgement
The person filing an assessment answers plain questions; the system applies the ICAO probability and severity scales and won't let an intolerable risk go unmitigated.
Nothing closes without evidence and a verifier
Mitigations, audit findings, and drill lessons all produce actions that are tracked to closure, verified by someone other than the person who did the work.
Built for the realities of shift work
Gloved hands, tablets, poor connectivity — Heliport OS is designed for people who need an answer in seconds, not a workflow tool built for a desk.
Every action is attributed, timestamped, and retained
When an investigator or auditor asks what happened and when, the system already has the answer.
Hospital Facilities Managers
You did not train in aviation, and the heliport is one of many things you are responsible for. The system asks what you know and handles what you do not.
Heliport Managers
One record instead of a folder of spreadsheets, a paper binder, and three people's memories.
Aviation Operators
Occurrence data and inspection history stay attached to the site and the aircraft, in a form an investigator can use.
Infrastructure Owners
The same standard of evidence across every site you operate, and visibility into where each one stands.
Request a Demo
Tell us about your heliport and we'll walk you through how Heliport OS handles hazard identification, risk assessment, corrective actions, and audit-ready records for your operation.