Emergent 2025 Audit Findings

Bloomfield, NJ (June 9, 2026) - As part of this year's ARGUS Connect event, we presented data on emerging trends from 2025 audit findings. This has become an annual exercise and provides great insight on those areas where operators show room for improvement.

Maintenance findings continue to lead by roughly 50% when compared to the next highest category, Safety Management Systems. The most common findings are in the areas of Quality Assurance and Facilities & Security. This includes reliability programs like CASS, tool control and calibration, hazmat procedures, emergency equipment access, and storage of flammable materials.

Maintenance findings are frequently a result of insufficient vendor oversight. As 135 operators tend to outsource the bulk of their maintenance, ensuring conformance to the ARGUS standard among their vendors is a critical function which is often overlooked.

Interestingly enough, SMS findings typically fall within one of the "four pillars" of SMS: Safety Policy, Risk Management, Safety Assurance, and Safety Promotion. We most often see inadequate Safety Objectives, Safety Risk Profiles (SRP's) and Safety Performance Indicators (SPI's), failure to perform Change Management assessments, lack of Internal Evaluation Programs, insufficient Root Cause Analysis, and lack of employee training.

These of course are critical SMS components and illustrate that this industry segment still has much to do before 14 CFR Part 5 goes into effect a year from now. The overarching theme of SMS findings is that 135 operators tend to be "data-rich, analysis-poor". They're collecting information but often lack effective processes to make sense of that data. This is key to identifying trends before they become problems: in other words, moving from a reactive safety culture to a proactive one, with the ultimate goal of achieving a predictive safety culture.

There was a marked increase in findings beginning mid-year 2025. Before that time, we consistently averaged 300 open findings each month. As of this writing, we are tracking over 850 open findings. This is due to a number of factors, including a 34% year-over-year increase in audit activity. However, it does not fully account for the increase as several audits have returned with between 60 and 100 findings.

While we often see high finding counts for first-time auditees, we have also observed this among established operators. The increase in operations tempo and turnover certainly has an impact, particularly turnover among the Part 119 managers and safety officers. These are the individuals who perform the bulk of audit preparation and onsite participation, and their lack of experience can have a direct effect on outcomes. This often leads to repeat findings, which are especially troublesome.

In the end, all findings must be corrected to earn an ARGUS rating. Regardless of how an operator achieves it, our audit and rating programs are raising the bar for safety across the industry.