FlightOps software

[Dutchman]

I have recently been put in charge of flight ops for a small bizjet operator(4 planes). Can anyone recomend any software out there to assist with running day to day tasks such as crew scheduling, FDT calculations. Nothing fancy required anything would be a step up from the pen and paper that is now being used and our budget is limited for the more complex Figthtops systems. Any excel templates/spreadsheets would also work great.

[Phil Brockwell]

We implemented Airops this year, quite commercially driven with a few Ops functions tagged on. Sounds like a step up from your current situation, but certainly seems to have a long learning curve. Would be interested in others experience, I have used PPS too, again good in parts but didn't tickk all the boxes.

PB

[dc9-32]

AIROPS is rubbish when it comes to day-to-day ops/crewing functions but good on the commercial side of the coin. For busy, fast changing environments, AIROPS is too slow, too random, and the support virtually non existent. I would avoid it.....

[Phil Brockwell]

DC-9.

What other systems are better for small operators, 6-7 aircraft on ad-hocs?

Phil

[CL300]

anybody tried FlightPack from universal recently ?

[dc9-32]

Phil

Acrobatico. Easy to use, manage and audit. Produces everything a small operator would need. They also provide support !!!!!!

Cheers

[Phil Brockwell]

I have had a look, seems a bit too simplistic for me. I have started putting a brief together to have something written specifically for our Op that would cover quoting, flight set-up (and the document control of set-up) flight watch and an online calender / Ops board.

Phil

[dc9-32]

Phil

Companies with 3 aircraft have used Acrobatico, and some with 23 aircraft have used it. Not sure what you mean by "simplistic" but I'm sure the likes of Monarch and Excel find it a very good package having endorsed it for years. Having used it myself in the past, I too found it a very good package.

Anyway, good luck with your project. I agree that Acrobatico won't provide the quoting aspects, but then any good XL spreadsheet will do that !!

[Phil Brockwell]

The quoting side isn't tricky, neither is the crewing, neither is the document flow, but getting something integrated with one point of data is.
Acrobaticio looks good for what it does, but that is not what I want. Airops has come closest, but is querky and cumbersome from trying to satisfy too many operators requirements.

We moved on from spreadsheet based quote calculations 8 years ago,

Phil

[dc9-32]

My comment about any good XL spreadsheet was a tongue in cheek comment !!

You are right about AIROPS being cumbersome though. There's nothing straight forward about it.

One day someone will produce what we all seek and in one package, with a good user manual, good training and good support. :ok:

[Phil Brockwell]

I think we are all a little quirky with how we calculate prices and control documents. The easy bit is the CAA controlled arena because it is uniform.

For me Airops does everything we want, but is bogged down by lots of stuff we dont want, and does not handle document flow well.

For quoting the best I have used for my requirements was flightquote2, it could be developed into something fantastic, but the owner was not interested in letting us partner on the extra modules.

Going back to the spreadsheet (that I rubbished out of hand.....sorry) I would like to see anyones copy of how you deal with lat / long lookup and the gret circle calculation.

Phil

[Phil Brockwell]

Spent some time yesterday looking at BizFlight.

I must admit it looks pretty damn good, a bit on the pricey side. Anyone had any experience with this, would welcome any feedback.

Phil

[dc9-32]

Most pages on the Bizflight site say "coming soon" :rolleyes: but that's not to say it's no good. If it works, it would be great to have it all under one roof !! Shame it won't file the FPL :ugh:

[Phil Brockwell]

I spent about an hour yesterday playing with it on a remote copy....pretty bloody impressive. Has some nice features and the quality of documentation is very good. I really like the to-do list stuff which gives good quality flow on the non-AOC type ops (handling requests, crew briefs, catering orders blah blah)
It does have stored routes and gives the option of great circle or stored routes for pricing.
Phil

[diesel862]

I am getting Bizflight installed in the next few days for my ops department. It is very impressive and looks the part, user friendly and can do alot of work under one imput, only thing it won't do is keep your pilots legal on crew hours or give you warnings if your getting close to 100 hours per 28 days or legal days off. Still I can live with that.

Vince

[dc9-32]

........sort of defeats the object if it doesn't track crew hours :uhoh:

[Phil Brockwell]

Depends what you want it to do, it does 99% of what I want it to do, and I get the impresson that Stefano would add whatever you needed in the fullness of time.
Crew hours is rarely if ever a problem for us,

Phil

[dc9-32]

Phil

So what will you use to record your running totals etc ? I'm a little surprised that a package like this doesn't already have the facility to upload a FTL scheme into the database to suit the operators needs so as to maintain an accurate record of duty times etc.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d99/andy757/dc9.jpg

[Phil Brockwell]

I use an Ops bloke with a calculator, they are a little tempermental, but you get what you pay for.

Remember my interest is in qulity control of the Quoting and flight set-up.

For me the Ops type addon mullarky are just a bonus.

Phil

[dc9-32]

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d99/andy757/_39784915_tosh_suitsyousir203b.jpg

Suits you then !!

[diesel862]

I use my trusty excel spreadsheet for the crew hours. I have used acrobat for crewing which was very poor and RM Rocade which is good but very pricey, Bizflight seems to have the scope of add-ons and upgrades. I'm sure Stefano will working something out to CAP371 / Part A FTL standards.

Vince

[dc9-32]

Hi Vince

I'm surprised to hear you say Acrobat was poor on the crewing side. When did you last use it ?

I have dropped Bizflight a line to see what they can do for me in terms of an overall package.

Thanks

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d99/andy757/dc9.jpg

[diesel862]

Hi

Not for a couple of years now, perhaps it has changed but it was not user friendly - my own personal opinion of course.

Bizflight is looking the way ahead as it can be taylored to have company logos and stationary for handling requests and passenger manifests.

My last job we used an excel spreadsheet for eveything which worked suprisingly well.

Cheers

Vince

[dc9-32]

quote

Bizflight is looking the way ahead as it can be taylored to have company logos and stationary for handling requests and passenger manifests.

unquote

Yep, thats what AIROPS told us, but even after 6 months or so of trying and asking them to sort it, the facility is still not working. AIROPS and SUPPORT do not go together.

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d99/andy757/dc9.jpg

[lifesabeech]

Any one got any feedback on PPS? Waiting to arrange a demo with Air Support any pro's and con's would be really helpful. For your info, privately operated hawker mostly europe and some N. Africa. Need a package we can use remotely(laptop and hotel room! *leaves the door wide open to smut and innuendoes doesn't it*) so any alternative suggestions are welcome, price not the biggest issue, ease of use and reliability more important.

Cheers

[BD-100]

If your maintenance tracking is already with CAMP you can consider their package, not the best but better then a spreadsheet.

I have used flightpak a lot. A big program that will do almost anything if you take the time to learn its features. Very good techsupport and they will work with you to make it do what you want to. You can tailor it with user defined options. The downside I found was that their financial reporting modules where cumbersome and in general a lot of manual input was required to get the most out of the program. All in all not a bad package.

I have heard many good things about BART ( seagill software) Seems to be about the same as Flightpak and like flightpak you can link to Universals tripmanager . I am seriously considering this package.

You will find that your life will become much easier after taking on a good flightplanning and tracking software, It will help with activity reports , get rid of the numerous spreadsheets you are probably using, make budgeting easier etc and get rid of a lot of duplication of effort and data entering.

Whichever package you choose make sure you or the vendor backs up your data on a regular basis.

PM me for more info if you wish.

[Phil Brockwell]

I had a frank conversation with The Airops Chaps, seems they have some good upgrades coming soon, sounded very encouraging indeed.

Phil

[dc9-32]

I had a frank conversation with The Airops Chaps, seems they have some good upgrades coming soon, sounded very encouraging indeed.

ah, that ol' chesnut. Believe it when I see it :uhoh:

What exactly are they promising then Phil :confused:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d99/andy757/dc9.jpg

[Awyrennwr]

PPS

Possibly the least user friendly package out there, still DOS based!

Doesn't do crew planning or aircraft scheduling.

The quoting system is basic but functional, it is DOS based so there can be no integration with spread sheets, word documents or Avinode, CharterX etc..

The flight planning system is now windows based wicj is a massive improvment, but is VERY slow, and still not great. (apx 7/10 of automatically generated routes plans get IFPS amended if not manually altered).

The Crewbriefing.com system is not bad though, once a plan has been generated it can be uploaded to the net. The crew can download the plogs & briefing from any internet PC with a few clicks.

Definitely not a good portable solution. The system requirements are very high and would need a top of the range laptop with 17" screen to operate satisfactorily.

Unless you are a large operation with a fixed base ops department, I would not recommend PPS.

On the plus side it does seem to be very widely used and the user support is excellent.

[wien]

Hi,

we are using Avi-Sched --> www.avisched.com (http://www.avisched.com) for our scheduling and crew planning since 2004.

We had some special requests to be implemented too - no problems at all.

regards from vienna!

[His dudeness]

Try www.aviationoffice.de

Great flightplanning and scheduling. ALL you need for a small operation.

Still under development and the guys will listen to your needs.

@Awyrennwr: interesting that you experience the same problem than I do - slow PPS. PPS tells me on the phone that it should be quicker than it is...My laptop ha definetely a problem with it.