Group Flying: e-booking

[whirlwind]

I've just bought a share in an old aeroplane, a return to fixed wing (and teenage dreams perhaps) after many years of professional rotary wing ops.

It appears that the current system of booking relies on the telephone and a diary in the clubhouse. What are the online systems available? I'm quite happy to set up a website and stuff, but have no idea about where to look for e-booking; your collective help (no helicopter puns here!) is requested.

Cheers, WW

[bern444]

We've been using e-allocator for years. Works fine.

[robin]

I work in IT and know the benefits, but 2 of my group are computer illiterate, so makes the idea of ebooking a complete waste of time.

A booking member and a diary works perfectly, however

[bern444]

We have around 100 members in our club - www.ltfc.org.uk (http://www.ltfc.org.uk) - and lots of them were computer illiterates, but strangely they soon discovered that they weren't when the club went for booking via e-allocator, and it's been working very well for several years now.

B

[Blink182]

www.aircraftbooking.co.uk

Simple , effective and user friendly. £45 per year.:)

[BIRK]

Some use: http://www.google.com/calendar/

it may not be high tech, but it does the trick

[Cusco]

Another vote for www.aircraftbooking.co.uk

Lots of useful extras like group email facilities and reminders for expiries of ratings/medicals etc.
Plus , for me as a technophobic old f@rt, the knowledge that if I have a hiccup, the owner of the system will personally help me out within hours (or occasionally minutes).

It has an admin facility so your chosen group admin officer can oversee the bookings and watch out for ungentlemanly conduct.

There are freebees out there but this system does what it says on the tin for 45 squids a year: peanuts in the greater scheme of things.............

There are also systems out there that will send out the bills too, but I'm not interested in this as we have a human being to do that.

Go for it

Cusco (no connection);)

[whirlwind]

That's very helpful chaps, thanks.

e-allocator would appear to be £5.75 per month + vat, whilst ABS is £45 p.a., so I guess I know which is preferable out of the 2 costwise. Google calendar refused to load on my iMac for some reason...

I'll approach the group committee and see what they think - as I'm going to do a website for the group, I guess I know what job will be coming my way in addition!

Cheers,
WW

[Sultan Ismail]

On-line Booking
Our club has been using Skyscheduler (http://www.skyscheduler.com/) for the last 12 months. You can see our booking front page here (http://rsfc.skyscheduler.com/) which also gives open access to todays activities.
The system supports the accounts and maintenance schedules and is as flexible as your imagination.

[Billredshoes]

Hi
for our group we use the following works very well and is free

http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/

[Lister Noble]

e-allocator gives you a booking,messaging and notice board service for the group.
We use it and it is reliable and non IT user friendly.
Lister:)

[IO540]

Some years ago, when i used to rent a plane out, I had a booking site program written. Quite simple and clear. If somebody wants the sources...

I believe it was written in Perl or something like that. It was running an a unix server running on an ADSL line.

[mixture]

e-allocator would appear to be £5.75 per month + vat, whilst ABS is £45 p.a., so I guess I know which is preferable out of the 2 costwise.

Whirlwind, one might argue that if the £24 p.a. (£2 p.m.) difference means so much to you, perhaps you should consider flying a few hours less per year ?

[Daifly]

Not sure why mixture went all argumentative there - every penny counts when it's not actually the flying itself! Why pay more for an online diary than you need to?

That said, we use e-allocator - very user-friendly. They only thing it lacks is a forum as far as I'm concerned. The notice board is OK, but things drop off the bottom very quickly and it's not the easiest thing to read. A forum where you could post information would be a bonus so you could have bits on airfield ideas, aircraft tips etc.

[mixture]

Didn't mean to make it sound "all argumentative" ...sorry ! :\

It's just £2 per month ?

Come on guys ... flying is expensive hobby ... deciding on subscribing to one service because a deciding factor is a difference of £2 per month just seems a pointless activity ?

There are so many ways you could make back that £2 per month ... e.g. skip a pudding on one of your land-away meals :cool:

[Cusco]

Daifly said
That said, we use e-allocator - very user-friendly. They only thing it lacks is a forum as far as I'm concerned. The notice board is OK, but things drop off the bottom very quickly and it's not the easiest thing to read. A forum where you could post information would be a bonus so you could have bits on airfield ideas, aircraft tips etc.


www.aircraftbooking.co.uk has all these things and more besides.

Cusco

[Julian]

Our group uses aircraftbooking.co.uk, never had any problems and has the added features such as warning you about expring medicals, etc,

Gets my vote.

J.

[First_Principal]

You might be interested to look at:

www.openflyers.org (http://www.openflyers.org)

It's written in PHP/MySQL, a common means of making such a thing and you have the option of using their hosted site (reasonably inexpensive), or they'll give you the software to put on your own machinery (it's open-source)!

It's written in France and queries seem to be answered very promptly. I understand there's several hundred clubs using the hosted version worldwide. There is a trial period available for the hosted version I think, and of course an on-line demo :).

IO540 - I'd be interested in looking at that system some time if you can dig it up, there's a few Unix boxes laying around here somewhere :8

FP.

[foxmoth]

Our group uses the Flyer booking system http://www.flyer.co.uk/syndicates/synhome.php
Works OK for our needs and its free (I have no problem paying for it, but when there is a free one that does the job .....):}

[Genghis the Engineer]

The two syndicates that I belong to just use a free Yahoo group for Email comms, file repository and bookings using the calendar function.

By and large trouble and cost free.

G