About us

Alain Zoller established Air Turquoise in 1995. He has been testing gliders since 1989 and knows very well AFNOR and LTF standards from the beginning. Claude Thurnheer started to work with Alain in 1994 as a test pilot. Together they have tested many gliders and have built up solid competences testing all type of gliders.

As the new EN (CEN) standard started to grow in 1994, we didn’t exactly know when it would get published. It took 11 years to develop the EN standard before it finally got published in 2005. The working group (WG6) that was responsible for the creation of the EN standard consists of national federations, manufacturers and test pilots. Every European country voted “YES” for this EN standard.

Less than one year after the standard was released, in January 2006, Alain Zoller and Randi Eriksen started to develop a testing structure and procedures according to the EN standard.

In March 2006 we could finally start testing after the new standard. We organized several “EN information-days” mainly for factory test pilots so they could know and understand how the new standard was working and how they could prepare their gliders before certification.

In 2006 Air Turquoise was certified by ISO 9001:2000 and obtained ISO 9001:2008 in 2009. This means that management and administration are supervised yearly and follow ISO 9001 standards.

In April 2009 Air Turquoise SA became an official LBA approved test house for type-inspection of aerial sports equipments according to German airlaw. Air Turquoise SA can test and certify paraglider equipment worldwide after the EN standard and for Germany according to LTF (2. DV LuftGerPV ).

Since 2010 Air Turquoise SA have two representatives in CEN / TC 136 / WG 6.
Germany eventually changed the rules for test house supervision, Air Turquoise SA then additionaly had to obtain the ISO 17020. This happened in 2015.

In 2016 we celebrated 10 years with EN standards.