Guide · updated September 2026
Three separate things are happening at once, and most of what you'll read treats them as one. What you should do depends entirely on which of them applies to you — and for a lot of organizations, the answer is the one nobody is writing about.
The short version
If you're already certified to AS9100D, AS9110C or AS9120B: the series is being renamed IA9100 / IA9110 / IA9120 and revised in two stages. You will likely transition twice, and the window is probably shorter than the three years you'd get on an ISO standard.
If you've never been certified because AS9100 was too much: the IAQG is developing IA9150, a streamlined certifiable standard built for exactly that situation. It's expected this year.
If someone quotes you a firm deadline: ask where they got it. As of today, the transition window has not been announced, and the published estimates contradict each other.
Where things actually stand
It's worth being precise about this, because a lot of coverage reads as though the new standard already exists.
ISO's own catalogue lists ISO 9001:2015 at stage 90.92 — "to be revised" — with the new edition expected in September 2026. The IAQG's own standard page still lists 9100:2016, which is AS9100D, as the current revision. Industry coverage through the first half of 2026 consistently reported the aerospace revision as still forthcoming.
So today, the standard you are certified to is the standard you were certified to last year. Nothing has changed yet. What follows is what's coming, and how confident anyone can reasonably be about it.
Change one · if you're already certified
This is the part most articles get half right. The revision is happening in two stages, and they have different scopes and different timing.
The visible change is the name. AS9100, AS9110 and AS9120 become IA9100, IA9110 and IA9120 — "IA" for International Aerospace, reflecting that these are international standards rather than American ones with international adoption. Alongside the rename, a limited set of near-term changes. Multiple sources close to the writing process describe this phase as not a complete rewrite.
The substantive one. It incorporates the new edition of ISO 9001, which the aerospace standards are built on top of, and is expected around mid-2027. Because ISO 9001 is the foundation, this phase can't finish until ISO 9001 does.
The practical consequence
Two revisions means two transitions. Plan for two transition audits rather than one. Organizations budgeting a single transition cycle — one gap analysis, one round of documentation updates, one audit — are budgeting for half the work.
The part to be careful about
This is where published guidance stops agreeing with itself. Four sources, four different answers:
| Source | What they say the window is |
|---|---|
| PRI | "Aerospace transitions are only one year" |
| Consultancy guidance | The IAQG "has indicated" three years |
| Registrar commentary | Two to three years; possibly two if classified as a minor revision |
| Independent analysts | Not yet announced; "likely to be less than three years" |
These aren't small differences. A one-year window and a three-year window imply completely different plans. And none of these sources is the IAQG.
What we'd actually advise
Plan for less time than an ISO transition would give you. Aerospace transitions have historically run shorter than ISO's three years, and there is a reasonable chance this one is materially shorter. Treat any specific date you read — including the ones above — as an estimate until the IAQG publishes transition rules. Then check with your registrar, because they administer the timeline you'll actually be audited against.
Change two · if you were never certified
The IAQG is developing a new standard, IA9150, described as a foundational quality management system. It is aimed at organizations that provide real aerospace capability but for whom full 9100 certification has never made sense.
Industry coverage in May 2026 described the target as startups, niche manufacturers and make-to-print suppliers who have "struggled to obtain AS9100 certification" — with cost and administrative burden named as the obstacles. The intent is a streamlined but genuinely certifiable system, letting smaller organizations demonstrate quality without carrying requirements designed for global enterprises. It is expected to be released this year.
If you're a fifteen-person shop making a specialised part for a tier-one supplier, AS9100 has probably always been a stretch — not because your quality is poor, but because the documentation overhead was written for organizations a hundred times your size. You may have been getting by on customer audits and reputation, and losing work to certified competitors anyway.
A certifiable standard scaled to that reality is a genuinely different proposition. It's also a reason to start building a quality system now rather than waiting: whatever IA9150 requires, it will require evidence, and evidence takes time to accumulate. An organization that starts recording its processes, training and nonconformances today will be in a much better position than one starting from zero the week the standard publishes.
What isn't public yet
The requirements themselves. Until IA9150 publishes, nobody outside the writing team knows exactly what it asks for — and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing. What is public is the intent, the audience, and the fact that it's coming.
What to do now
Sources and honesty
Everything above is drawn from public sources: ISO's own standards catalogue for the ISO 9001 status, the IAQG's published materials for the 9100 revision content and the existence of IA9150, PRI's published schedule for the two-phase structure, and industry coverage through 2026 for the rest.
Where sources disagree, we've said so rather than picking the one that makes the best headline. Where something isn't known, we've said that too. If the IAQG publishes transition rules that contradict any of this, this page gets updated — it carries the date it was last revised at the top for that reason.
This guide is written by an aerospace quality auditor. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited by the IAQG, SAE or ISO, and it is not a substitute for the published standards, which you should hold licensed copies of.
If this was useful
JBird is a quality management system for aerospace organizations — the process map, the manual, the audits, the calibration recall and the corrective actions in one place, built by the person who wrote this page. It's in development, and we're working with a small number of pilot organizations.