Standards
The 9100 series shares a backbone — ISO 9001:2015 — and then diverges depending on what your organization does. JBird templates to the one you're certified to, including the sector-specific requirements, rather than giving you a generic quality system to bend into shape.
The core aviation, space and defense standard, for organizations that design and build product. ISO 9001:2015 plus the aerospace requirements layered on top.
For distributors and stockists who don't manufacture but do control what reaches the manufacturer. The traceability and counterfeit requirements carry most of the weight here.
For MRO organizations, where the requirements bend toward airworthiness, human factors and the reality of working on parts already in service.
Clauses 4 through 10 sit underneath all three aerospace standards. If you're certified to ISO 9001 alone, JBird works as a standalone QMS — and gives you a clean path if aerospace certification comes later.
What JBird looks like for an ISO 9001 shop supplying aerospace →
Not sure where you stand?
Take the free readiness self-check — one short question per clause group for whichever of these standards apply to you, and a clause-by-clause read of where your quality system already is and where the gaps are. Ungated, nothing saved or sent. Start the readiness self-check →
Customer flow-downs and certification rules
The standard is only part of what you're held to. Primes add their own requirements, and the certification scheme sets how your audits run. Plain-English explainers for the ones that come up most:
Which appendix applies to you, what Boeing expects from your certification, and the fourteen requirements on top of the standard.
What flows down to a sub-tier, what doesn't, and the four items that need a process rather than a signature.
What the 2022 rules changed for a certified shop: 90-day data, risk-based audit days, remote limits and site structures.
The next revision
The International Aerospace Quality Group is renaming and revising the 9100 series alongside the new edition of ISO 9001. The "IA" stands for International Aerospace. AS9110 and AS9120 are being revised in the same series, and every certified organization will have to transition.
Full guide
We've written a plain guide to all three changes coming to the aerospace standards — the two-phase 9100 revision, the disputed transition window, and the new IA9150 foundational standard for smaller suppliers. Read the 2026 changes guide →
Drawn from the IAQG's own published summary of key changes for the revision. Clause references are to the current revision and may move.
Information security programs become a requirement, with risk assessment and incident response expected rather than encouraged.
Tighter supplier verification, counterfeit detection and oversight that reaches past your direct suppliers (clause 8.4).
Expanded expectations on ethical conduct and on how leadership drives quality culture and accountability (clause 5.1).
More weight on MSA, SPC and APQP — moving from static risk registers toward risk-informed decisions (clauses 6.1, 8.1).
Deeper FMEA integration, traceability for safety-critical items, and observable human-factors controls (clause 7.1.4).
Digitalization and traceability of records becoming audit-critical rather than optional (clause 7.5).
Worth saying plainly
Much of what you'll read about this transition online states a confident publication date and deadline. Those sources disagree with each other, and none of them is the IAQG. Until the standard publishes and the transition rules are announced, the honest position is that the direction is known and the dates are not.
So anyone selling you a finished IA9100 solution today is guessing. What we can commit to is architecture: JBird stores your evidence against clauses in a way that maps forward, so a revision is a content update rather than starting the gap analysis over on a blank sheet.
Reference
Common to ISO 9001:2015 and the 9100 series, with the aerospace additions shown where they sit.
| Clause | Title | Notable aerospace additions |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Context of the organization | Scope must state the products and sites covered |
| 5 | Leadership | Product safety and ethical behaviour awareness |
| 6 | Planning | Operational risk management, not just a risk register |
| 7 | Support | Human factors (7.1.4), measurement traceability (7.1.5.2) |
| 8 | Operation | Configuration management, product safety, counterfeit prevention, FAI |
| 9 | Performance evaluation | On-time delivery and quality performance to customer |
| 10 | Improvement | Corrective action with root cause and effectiveness verification |
Summary only, for orientation. It is not a substitute for the published standard, which you should hold a licensed copy of.
Which of these JBird covers today
JBird was built system-level first. Clauses 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10.2 are built and working — context, planning, resources and calibration, documented information, gap analysis, internal audit with the 9101 forms, customer satisfaction, management review, and corrective action. Clause 8 is being closed now in order of audit sampling frequency: operational risk management, product safety, special process approval and first article inspection, external provider control, configuration management, contract and order review, acceptance authority media, customer and supplier property, shelf-life and preservation, control of production changes, release of product and control of nonconforming output are built. So are design and development, customer communication, communication (7.4), analysis and evaluation (9.1.3), counterfeit prevention (8.1.4) and continual improvement (10.3). So are the two most recent: 8.5.1.1, validating equipment, tools and software before use — its own register, separate from calibration, because that is a different requirement — and 8.4.3, the terms flowed down to an external provider, held as one maintained document plus a per-supplier record of how it reached them. As of September 2026 every clause of all three standards is described in the manual and assessed in the gap analysis. Four still have no dedicated place to record evidence against them: 8.4.2 on the type and extent of control applied to a supplier, 8.5.5 on post-delivery activities, 8.1.5 on suspected unapproved parts — which applies to AS9120B distributors as well as AS9110C — and 8.1.6 on installation of approved parts, AS9110C only. For an AS9100D shop, that leaves 8.4.2 and 8.5.5: the other two cannot apply. The product page says exactly where the line is →
Pilot program
45 modules are already built and working. Pilot organizations get the system at no cost during development, direct input on what gets built next — there is a Report a Problem button on every screen, and it goes to a register we work through — and a migration path when the IA9100 revision lands.