IOSA — IATA Operational Safety Audit

What IOSA Is

The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) is an internationally recognized evaluation system that assesses an airline's operational management and safety control systems against a common set of standards, rather than inspecting individual aircraft. IATA created it so a single accepted audit could replace the many duplicate audits airlines, code-share partners, and regulators previously ran independently of each other.

What Gets Audited

An IOSA audit reviews documentation, procedures, and management systems across eight operational areas:

Governance

IOSA is owned and administered by IATA, with the IOSA Oversight Committee — made up of member airlines and regulatory authorities — overseeing the standards and the accredited audit organizations that carry out the audits.

Renewal and Registry

An IOSA registration is valid for two years, after which the airline must complete a new audit to remain on the IOSA Registry. Airlines that let their registration lapse are removed from the registry until they re-audit.

Relationship to IATA Membership

IOSA registration is a condition of IATA membership: every IATA member airline must be, and remain, IOSA-registered. The program is also open to non-members, and many airlines on the registry join purely for the safety and commercial credibility it provides — a number of code-share and interline agreements require IOSA registration of a partner airline before an agreement will be signed.

Why It Matters

Because IOSA uses one standardized checklist audited by accredited third-party organizations, an airline's IOSA status gives regulators, partner airlines, and passengers a common, comparable signal of its safety management maturity — without every partner needing to run its own separate audit of the same airline.