Centrik Moves Into South Africa With Premier Aviation

Centrik has expanded into South Africa, one of the world’s most highly regulated aviation markets. An industry first, it has solved both the manned and unmanned operational management challenges for Premier Aviation (PA), an aerial survey company based near Pretoria.

Premier Aviation adopted Centrik after recognising that it could manage both its Air Operator Certificate (AOC) and Remote Operator Certificate (ROC) simultaneously -making Centrik the world’s first aviation management system to manage both manned and unmanned operations in one package.

Centrally managing all its Air Operations has simplified a huge administrative burden for PA and has taken them way beyond basic compliance. Centrik is also enabling them to evidence process and procedural excellence to both the Regulator and the highly safety-conscious clients of the mining, engineering and construction sector.

Under South African CAA regulations, commercial UAS operators are subject to some of the most rigorous levels of oversight in the world with just 11 ROCs issued across the country to date.

Robin Kock, Flight Operations Manager, Premier Aviation, says: “UAS operations in South Africa require a ROC, which demands the same level of commitment to and oversight of Safety and Quality Systems as an AOC in manned aviation. Centrik eases this huge compliance challenge and lets us get on with our core surveying business safely and efficiently.”

As the only ICAO-compliant operational management system for both manned and unmanned aircraft, Centrik allows Premier Aviation to easily ensure compliance across the entire aviation business. Built for UAS operators exploiting its heritage in manned aviation, Centrik enables operators to satisfy the requirements of a Regulator moving to Risk and Performance Based Oversight (RBO) at the click of a button.

Centrik covers all aspects of UAS management in one, integrated package. It provides complete visibility over all aspects of operations and it can be used to evidence processes and procedures to clients and regulators easily and efficiently.

Kock says: “We were immediately impressed with how easy Centrik was to use, but more importantly, how powerful it would be to have all our operational data in one place, at our fingertips – no more searching through box files, spreadsheets or emails! Merely being compliant is not enough. Thanks to Centrik, we can now demonstrate our operational excellence to both clients and the Regulator, with a few clicks of a button - it’s a huge time saver and business enabler.”

Established in 2007, Premier Aviation, part of the Premier Group, is unique in offering aerial survey support to the mining, engineering and construction sectors using both manned and unmanned aircraft or drones.