"Looking for a simple programme to keep track of flight/duty times for a small flight dept". [WANDERLUST]
"My mob flies 13 jets, and we have not computerised (groan) yet". [boredcounter]
Help is at hand !
The problem with UK CAA Crew Records since CAP 371 is that the ops/crewing people who can do all the required sums are all far too busy to do so. So you either have to hire someone to do all the sums, or put a computer in the hands of the crewing people.
We all on PPRuNe know what computers mean: Hutber's law, "progress means deterioration" usually applies. Without effective software, the computer wastes more time not less.
Small new airline companies fudge the issue somehow: they might perhaps do an awkward labour-intensive spreadsheet, discover how difficult programming is, then perhaps try a local shop to write something for them. The local shop charges upwards of 50 quid an hour to program, yet doesn't really understand the problem in enough detail. [ Eg, how many even of us current crewing people REALLY understand the niceties of say, split-duty FDPs on a 3-sector day after a positioning "sector" then a dead-heading "sector" after a standby duty spent in a hotel provided by the company starting at 0500 local for a crew who were in Newfoundland 3 nights ago and were perhaps using a level 2 variation to get there ?] So the local-shop solution can cost tens of thousands, and still doesn't do the job, and the CAA won't approve it easily, and you find you have started not just a small new airline, but a large software development project. And you wish you hadn't!
Yet the all-singing all-dancing crewing and operations planning and rostering software currently used by the majors probably costs a quarter of a million quid up front, and then 50 grand a year to run and maintain.
There seemed to be nothing in between back in the early nineties when CHORES! was developed. CHORES! - the Crew HOurs REcording System - is now well-proven by crewing managers in UK airlines: among them Airtours, Airworld, All Leisure, Ambassador, British World, Classic, DebonAir, Excalibur, HeavyLift, Sabre and Trans-European. They stop using it when they get big enough to be taken over and to afford the quarter of a million quid (like Airworld that joined Flying Colours, or All Leisure subsumed by TransAer) or if they go bust (like Ambassador and Trans European)
Danny & jb007, I hope you won't mind if I sail close to the wind on advertising and risk being banned, but>:
If you are a small flight dept, Wanderlust, even if only 10 sets of crew
and certainly if you have 13 jets, boredcounter,
CHORES! could well be for you. It's available.
eMail me for more details.
Thanks for the plug, jb007