SkyBOOKS, a Bell Helicopter and Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, this week announced that several fleet operators opted to sign multi-year service contracts for SkyBOOKS electronic based system that includes maintenance programs, flight logs, pilot logs, and other tracking systems.

"SkyBOOKS provides a single source solution for the management of all flight operations data that can be applied to a single aircraft or an entire fleet," said John Willis, SkyBOOKS chief operating officer.

"With the application of Skybooks electronic platforms, the future of aircraft maintenance has arrived. We anticipate this service will provide substantial benefits to the aviation community in the coming years," said Mike Blake, executive vice-president for Bell's customer solutions organization Recent orders have come from Gulf Coast Aviation based in Houston, TX where they operate an eight aircraft fleet; RVR Air Charter in Ft. Worth, TX where they operate a fleet of 12 aircraft ranging from Citation Jets to Falcon 50s; Helicopter Express, operating the largest fleet with 19 units, based in Atlanta, GA , in a mixed Bell and Eurocopter rotary wing fleet; and the Jacksonville, FL Sherriff's Office operating three Bell 206 and one Piper fixed wing.

All these fleet operators expressed a common reason for selecting SkyBOOKS: to help carry out their fiduciary obligations and ensuring their asset protection with a system that provides real time condition insight, allowing them better planning, inventory control and management of their fleets. Additionally the warranty tracking capability will allow cost recovery that previously did not exist.

SkyBOOKS customers indicate they find the system very intuitive and the analyst support personnel very responsive. Customers can simply send a copy of the Return to Service documents via fax or email to their analyst who will immediately update the system maintenance event schedule and load all supporting documents in the on-line vault. Super users can be trained to provide their own updates and utilize the SkyBOOKS analyst as their outsourced quality department to confirm the actions taken.