Terms of service

1. What we provide

A hosted application for operating a Safety Management System under 14 CFR Part 5: hazard and safety reporting, safety risk management, safety assurance, training and currency records, document storage, safety communications, and reporting and export of the records those activities produce.

We provide software and the SMS framework content inside it. We do not act as your safety manager, your accountable executive, your designated employer representative, or your consultant, and nothing in the system is legal advice.

2. Compliance remains yours

This is important and we would rather be blunt about it than have you discover it later. We are not the FAA, we are not affiliated with it, and the system is not FAA-approved or FAA-accepted. No software can be. Your SMS is accepted or not accepted on the basis of your own operation, your own records and your own declaration of compliance.

You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of what you put in, for whether your SMS meets part 5 as applied to your operation, and for every submission you make to the FAA. The readiness checks, citations and guidance in the system are our good-faith reading of the rule and are there to help you work; they are not a determination that you comply, and we do not warrant that any regulator will agree with them.

3. Subscription, payment, renewal and refunds

You subscribe yearly or monthly. Current list pricing, per operator rather than per user: $599 a year or $89 a month for a single-pilot operation as described in § 5.9(e); $1,299 a year or $199 a month for an operator with up to 5 aircraft and 20 people; and a quoted price for larger operators.

Payment. You pay online by card or bank transfer through our payment processor, Stripe, or by invoice if you ask us for one. Card and bank details go to Stripe; we never see or store them. Paying does not create an account by itself: we contact you within one business day to set your organization up. If the tier you chose does not match your operation, we will tell you on that call and either refund the difference or ask you to pay it before we provision the higher tier.

Renewal. A subscription paid online renews automatically at the end of each period — every year or every month — charged to the payment method you used, at the list price then in force. We will remind you by email before each yearly renewal, and if the price of your plan changes we will tell you at least 30 days before it applies to you. A subscription paid by invoice renews when you pay the renewal invoice. We will not change the price of a period you have already paid for.

Cancelling. You can cancel at any time by emailing certs@145manuals.com or calling us. Cancelling stops the next renewal; the subscription runs to the end of the year or month you paid for, and section 4 then says exactly what happens to your records.

Refunds. If you ask within 14 days of a subscription payment — your first payment or a renewal — we will refund it in full and end the subscription. After 14 days, subscription payments are not refundable, but the subscription stays fully usable to the end of the period you paid for.

Written SMS manual and emergency response plan. This optional one-time service ($995 single pilot, $1,495 operator) is written for your operation from an interview with you, and is yours to keep whether or not you stay subscribed. It is refundable in full until we hold that interview; after the interview it is not refundable. Acceptance of your SMS by the FAA, and the content of your declaration of compliance, remain your responsibility (section 2).

4. What happens if a subscription lapses

A lapsed or cancelled subscription will never lock you out of your own records. This is a term of this agreement and not a courtesy.

When a subscription lapses or is cancelled, the system becomes read-only:

• Every record already in it stays available to your authorized users — safety reports, hazards, risk assessments, corrective actions, audits, assurance and management reviews, training records, flight risk assessments, communications and documents.
• Every export keeps working, including the full evidence pack, so you can take your records out in a usable form at any time — including when you are leaving us for someone else.
• What stops is writing: no new entries, no training progress, no acceptances or sign-offs, and no changes to your organization’s settings, until the subscription is renewed.

Renewal restores full function immediately, with nothing lost in the interval. We will not delete, withhold or hold hostage your safety records over an unpaid subscription.

We may retain a lapsed organization’s data in read-only form indefinitely. If you ask us in writing to delete your organization, we will do so within 30 days, after giving you an opportunity to export first. Deletion is permanent, and records you are required to retain under § 5.97 are your responsibility to keep.

5. Your data

Everything you put into the system belongs to you. We claim no ownership of it and we do not sell it, rent it, or use it to train anything. We process it to provide the service to you, to keep it secure and backed up, and for nothing else.

We may use aggregated, de-identified statistics about how the product is used — how many organizations use a feature, how long a form takes — to improve it. Nothing in that can identify you, your people, or anything they reported.

You can export your records yourself, at any time, while active or read-only. If you need an export we cannot produce from the interface, ask and we will produce it.

6. Confidential reports

A confidential safety report is confidential. Where a report is submitted confidentially, the system withholds the reporter’s identity from your users, and we will not disclose it to you, to anyone in your organization, or to any third party, except where we are compelled by law or valid legal process — and then only to the extent compelled, and we will tell you unless we are prohibited from doing so.

You agree not to attempt to identify a confidential reporter by inference, pressure, or any other means, and not to retaliate against anyone for making a report in good faith. Reporting culture is the one part of an SMS that cannot be rebuilt once it is broken.

7. Your responsibilities

• Keep credentials secure, and tell us promptly if you believe an account has been compromised.
• Keep your member list current. Removing people who have left is how tenant separation stays meaningful.
• Use the system for your own SMS. Do not resell access, share a login between people, or use it to operate an SMS for an organization that is not a subscriber.
• Do not attempt to access another organization’s data, probe or circumvent the access controls, or interfere with the service for anyone else.
• Where the system records a designation — accountable executive, safety manager, a supervisor trained to order a reasonable-suspicion test — make sure the designation is true of your organization. A designation recorded here that is not real in your operation helps nobody.

8. Availability

We aim to keep the system available at all times and we do not promise a specific uptime percentage. We will not deliberately take it down during your business hours without notice, and we will tell you about planned maintenance that we expect you to notice.

Because the system holds records you may need at short notice, we keep backups and we keep your data exportable. If the service were ever to be discontinued, we will give you at least 90 days’ written notice and keep exports working throughout.

9. Security

Data is held in a managed, access-controlled database and object store, encrypted in transit and at rest by the providers we use. Each organization’s records are separated at the query layer, and access within an organization follows the role you assign.

No system is perfect. If we become aware of a breach affecting your data, we will notify you without undue delay and tell you what we know, what we have done, and what you should do.

10. Suspension and termination

You may stop using the system at any time; a subscription you have paid for runs to the end of its term. We may suspend an individual account immediately where we reasonably believe it is being used to attack the service or to access another organization’s data, and we will tell you why.

We may terminate this agreement on 30 days’ written notice, or immediately for a material breach you do not cure within 15 days of our telling you about it. In either case, section 4 governs what happens to your records: read-only access and working exports.

11. Warranties and liability

The system is provided as it is. We do not warrant that it will be error-free, that it will meet every requirement of your operation, or that any regulator will accept your SMS. To the extent permitted by law, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

Neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages, or for lost profits. Our total liability arising out of this agreement is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.

Nothing in this section limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or willful misconduct, and nothing in it relieves us of the obligation in section 4 to keep your records available and exportable.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially reduces your rights, we will tell you by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, and the terms in force when you paid govern your current term. Continuing to use the system after a change takes effect means you accept it.

13. General

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Nevada, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules, and the state and federal courts sitting in Clark County, Nevada have exclusive jurisdiction. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands. Neither party may assign this agreement without the other’s consent, except to a successor to its business.

Questions about these terms, or anything in them you want changed before you sign: certs@145manuals.com.

See also our privacy policy.