Aerotalon vs Vellox Group Safety Suite

Understanding Vellox Group Safety Suite and the Product Separation

Vellox Group Safety Suite is a cloud-based Safety Management System (SMS) software designed for aviation, transport, and health sectors. Formerly known as the Air Maestro SMS module, it became a standalone product in 2024 when Air Maestro rebranded to Vellox Group and split into two separate offerings: Safety Suite for SMS compliance and Ops Suite for flight operations.

This product separation represents a fundamental shift in how operators must approach aviation software. Where Air Maestro previously provided integrated operations and safety management in one platform, Vellox Group now requires operators to purchase and manage two separate systems: Safety Suite for SMS requirements (hazard reporting, audits, risk assessment, compliance) and Ops Suite for operational needs (flight planning, OCC, dispatch, duty management). This separation creates data silos, increases total cost of ownership, and adds administrative complexity for operators who need both functions.

Vellox Safety Suite Features: What It Actually Includes

Based on Vellox's own website, Safety Suite provides six core SMS capabilities:

• Audit Management: Plan, schedule, and manage internal/external audits in an online repository
• Hazard/Risk Management: Identify and analyze hazards, manage associated risks and controls, create task profiles linking risks and hazards
• Incident/Accident Reporting: Track events from incident to resolution with customizable risk-based safety reports and interactive investigation forums
• Safety Statistics & Dashboards: Custom reports and predefined overview reports by category, year, and status
• Operational Risk Assessment / FRAT: Customizable online forms for flight-specific risk assessment before each mission
• Change Management: Digitize organizational change management workflow with desktop and offline access

Critically, Safety Suite addresses the four pillars of SMS (Safety Policy, Safety Risk Management, Safety Assurance, Safety Promotion) and integrates SMS requirements into one centralized system. However, it does NOT include flight operations, dispatch, OCC command center, fleet tracking, or maintenance scheduling - all of which require separate purchase of Vellox Ops Suite.

The Critical Problem: Data Silos Between Ops and SMS

The separation of Vellox Safety Suite from Ops Suite creates a fundamental data integration challenge. Effective SMS requires comprehensive understanding of operational context - flight conditions, crew duty status, maintenance history, dispatch decisions, and OCC communications all provide critical context for hazard analysis and risk assessment. When SMS data lives in a separate system from operational data, safety managers face several critical limitations:

First, hazard reports lack automatic linkage to specific flights, crew schedules, maintenance events, or dispatch decisions. Safety managers must manually correlate SMS data with operational information by exporting from one system and importing to another. This manual process introduces delays, increases administrative burden, and creates opportunities for data entry errors.

Second, trend analysis becomes significantly more complex. Identifying patterns between operational factors (like duty time, weather conditions, aircraft utilization) and safety events requires manual data compilation from both systems. The lag time between operational events and SMS analysis prevents proactive safety management and real-time risk mitigation.

Aerotalon's Integrated Approach: Unified Ops + SMS Platform

Unlike Vellox's separated products, Aerotalon provides complete flight operations AND safety management in a single unified platform. This integration isn't just convenient - it fundamentally transforms how operators manage safety compliance and operational risk. Hazard reports automatically link to the associated flight record, crew duty status, aircraft maintenance history, and dispatch decisions, providing comprehensive safety intelligence without manual data correlation.

When a pilot reports a hazard in Aerotalon, the system automatically captures operational context: aircraft tail number, flight route, weather conditions, crew duty hours, previous maintenance on that aircraft, and related OCC communications. This unified data enables safety managers to conduct comprehensive risk analysis immediately, without waiting for manual data compilation from separate systems. Flight Risk Assessment (FRAT) data flows directly into SMS risk databases, creating a continuous feedback loop between operational risk assessment and safety management.

The operational benefits extend beyond data integration. Compliance management becomes dramatically simpler when all SMS requirements (CASA Part 119, FAA FAR Part 5, EASA Part-ORO), operational requirements, duty/rest regulations, and maintenance compliance tracking exist in one platform. During CASA, FAA, or EASA surveillance audits, inspectors can review complete operational and safety records from a unified audit trail rather than compiling data from multiple disconnected systems.

The True Cost of Vellox's Product Separation

Operators considering Vellox Group must understand the total cost of ownership for separated products. Safety Suite alone provides SMS compliance but requires separate purchase of Ops Suite for flight operations, creating duplicate costs across multiple dimensions:

• Double Licensing: Two separate platform licenses rather than one unified solution
• Double Implementation: Setup and configuration costs for both Safety Suite and Ops Suite
• Double Training: Crew and staff must learn two separate systems with different interfaces and workflows
• Double Support Contracts: Separate support agreements and service level commitments for each product
• Double Administration: IT teams manage two platforms, two user databases, two update cycles
• Integration Overhead: Custom development or manual processes to connect Safety Suite and Ops Suite data

Beyond direct costs, the administrative burden of managing two separate platforms significantly increases operational overhead. Safety managers spend time exporting data, correlating information manually, and maintaining consistency between systems rather than focusing on proactive safety management. For typical Part 135 operators requiring both SMS compliance and operational management, Aerotalon's unified platform delivers over 50% savings depending on your existing Vellox contract when accounting for licensing, implementation, training, support, and administrative efficiency.

SMS Compliance: CASA, FAA, EASA, and ICAO Frameworks

Both Vellox Safety Suite and Aerotalon support comprehensive SMS compliance frameworks across all major global regulatory authorities:

• CASA (Australia): Part 119 AOC holders, CASR 119.205 SMS requirements
• FAA (United States): FAR Part 5 SMS for Part 121 airlines and Part 135 certificate holders
• EASA (Europe): Part-ORO.GEN.200 SMS requirements for Part-CAT and commercial operations
• ICAO: Annex 19 Safety Management international standards

The four pillars of SMS - Safety Policy, Safety Risk Management, Safety Assurance, and Safety Promotion - are addressed by both platforms through hazard identification, risk assessment, safety performance monitoring, and safety communication tools. This ensures compliance regardless of your primary regulatory authority.

However, the integration of SMS with operational data provides significant compliance advantages. FAR Part 5 requires Safety Risk Management processes that analyze hazards in operational context - understanding how duty time, weather, maintenance, and dispatch decisions contribute to safety events. When SMS data is siloed from operational information, this analysis requires manual data compilation. Aerotalon's unified platform automatically provides this operational context, enabling more effective Safety Risk Management and more comprehensive Safety Assurance monitoring.

For international operators subject to multiple regulatory frameworks (EASA, Transport Canada, CASA), managing SMS compliance across jurisdictions becomes significantly simpler with unified data. Rather than maintaining separate SMS records in Safety Suite and operational records in Ops Suite, then attempting to correlate them for different regulatory authorities, Aerotalon provides comprehensive compliance evidence from one integrated platform.

Audit Readiness: Unified Platform vs Separated Systems

During FAA surveillance audits, IASA assessments, or internal quality audits, inspectors require comprehensive evidence demonstrating SMS effectiveness and operational compliance. This includes hazard reports, risk assessments, corrective action records, training documentation, flight records, duty/rest compliance, maintenance tracking, and management review evidence.

With Vellox's separated products, audit preparation requires compiling data from both Safety Suite and Ops Suite, manually correlating SMS records with operational information, and creating unified documentation showing the relationship between safety management and flight operations. This process typically takes 6-8 weeks of dedicated safety manager time or requires expensive consulting support.

Aerotalon's one-click audit preparation automatically generates comprehensive audit packages including all SMS and operational compliance documentation from the unified platform. The system organizes evidence by regulatory requirement (FAR Part 5 pillars, Part 135 operational regulations, etc.), includes executive summaries highlighting SMS effectiveness, and exports complete audit trails in inspector-friendly formats. This reduces audit preparation from weeks to days while significantly improving audit outcomes through more complete and coherent compliance evidence.

Why Safety Managers Are Choosing Integrated Platforms

The trend in aviation software is clear: operators are moving away from fragmented point solutions toward unified platforms that integrate operations and safety management. This shift reflects several critical factors:

First, modern SMS requires comprehensive operational context for effective risk analysis. Isolated SMS systems that lack integration with flight operations, maintenance, crew scheduling, and dispatch limit the depth and quality of safety insights. Unified platforms provide the operational intelligence necessary for proactive safety management.

Second, the administrative burden of managing multiple disconnected systems significantly impacts operational efficiency. Safety managers report spending 30-40% of their time on data compilation and system administration when using separated products versus 5-10% with integrated platforms - allowing far more time for actual safety management activities.

Third, the total cost of ownership for separated products substantially exceeds unified platforms when accounting for duplicate licensing, implementation, training, support, and integration overhead. For resource-constrained operators (whether CASA Part 119, FAA Part 135, or EASA Part-CAT), Aerotalon delivers over 50% savings depending on your existing Vellox contract - often determining whether implementing robust SMS is financially feasible.

Making the Right Choice for Your Operation

For operators evaluating SMS software, the choice between Vellox Safety Suite and Aerotalon ultimately comes down to three questions: Do you need both operations management and SMS compliance? Do you want unified data or can you manage data silos between separate systems? And what is your total cost of ownership budget for aviation software? If you require comprehensive operations and safety management, want unified operational and safety data for better insights, and need to control total costs, Aerotalon's integrated platform delivers superior value. If you only need standalone SMS without operational integration and already have separate operations software, Vellox Safety Suite may be worth evaluating - though the data silo challenges remain.