Flight Operations can be a complicated business at the best of times. Throw in a global pandemic, Brexit and climate change and you’ve got a real headache to manage.  

There are multiple systems, apps and full ERP platforms to help tame the complexity, but here are some particularly bad areas where Operators are really not helping themselves: 

1. Not automating Crew Management – Crew Currencies, FTLs, Crew Training and Crew Rostering can be a pain and if done wrong, a serious safety and compliance risk. The days of relying on manual spreadsheets for crewing are over – they’re too easily lost, mistyped, deleted, copied or hacked – and tracking ever changing flight actuals for each crew member inside and outside your organisation is better left to Crew Management engines.  

2. Using WhatsApp for communicating with Crew – Something many Operators are guilty of: relying on an Instant Messaging app rather than using the proper tools designed to push and capture key information for your Pilots and office staff. WhatsApp is great for a quick reminder or catchup, but when it comes to feeding your Flight Ops system with the key data needed for flight recording, business reporting and calculating profit and loss, you should consider a dedicated Crew App.

3. Constantly monitoring unchanged reports – Now this is no-one’s fault: an Operator must keep track of the environment they are operating in, from weather to crew training compliance. What does amount to a massive waste of time though is that spent reading an unchanged Weather report when instead your focus should only be alerted when that Weather report has an impact or becomes a flight risk. Understand more about the future of realtime alerting here.

4. Somehow becoming both Flight Ops Manager and CAMO Manager – There are many many responsibilities being a Flight Operations Manager or similar – safety and success of the flight is largely on your shoulders. You are likely also dealing with the Maintenance data from the flights, having to check when the aircraft can even be scheduled to fly, or ensuring that your CAMO have a clear view of upcoming flights. A simple solution and a huge time saver going back and forth between departments is to integrate your TRAXXALL, CAMP or myairops CAM software to your Flight Operations system. Find out more about the benefits of integration in our recent talk at EBACE Connect.  

5. Getting swamped in report writing – Flight Operations produce vast quantities of data, performance and financial information – never mind what they require to ensure safety and compliance. How much time are you spending chasing the end of month figures? Or checking Crew are eligible for a flight? Or awaiting the profit/loss sheets for a senior meeting? Ensure you have an automated report writer within your Flight Ops system to collect and effectively display your data to have reports delivered to schedule, or instantly produced. Another option is to integrate a data tool such as Power BI to your software.  

6. Chasing and forgetting tasks or seeing problems too late – Short of investing in a separate project management tool, the best way to manage your Team’s tasks around the complex processes of Flight Operations is to build them into your Flight Ops software. Systems typically should come with automated task lists in place that you can then tailor to your specific operations, allowing you to track job progress and delays and identify issues as early as possible.  

7. Scanning forms, receipts and other paper – one of the most common complaints of wasted time in Flight Departments: the collection and uploading of receipts into traditional Flight Ops systems. When AI scanning finally broke into aviation software and was applied to this problem, Flight Ops Managers spoke in terms of personnel savings rather than just hours. If your Finance and Ops staff are still struggling with enormous volumes of paperwork, consider solutions that include AI and Machine Learning automated scanning applications.  

If you would like to read more about challenges facing Flight Operations Managers, Crew to Ops communications, Brokering and much more, head to myairops.com or if you have a specific challenge in mind, book a free consultation here.

 

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