Research - Unifying admin aspects of flying
 

Hey people,

I’ve been thinking about the frictions in keeping all the admin aspects of a PPL’s life organised, and wondering whether there are pain points that more pilots share or can identify.

Personally, I find it frustrating that I use one tool for navigation and flight planning, another for updating my logbook; plane charter bookings are still done by phone (in my case); and when I was a student, my only way to check progress or training plans was to ask my instructor.

There doesn’t seem to be a single, integrated place where I can pull together all of this: documents, licenses, flight planning, logbook, charter ops; and actually take actions like booking a flight, finding people to fly with, reviewing my training plan, or locating AMEs or SEP renewal options.

I have the gut feeling there's something there to resolve. My goal is to better understand if my assumption has any strength / foundation to it, and if yes, to then invest my time into trying to create a solution.

If you'd be interested in participating in this discussion, I'd be very thankful.
I have put together these 3 questions, but happy to read any friction / pain point you may want to share.

1) How do you manage all the admin and planning in your flying life today?
2) What are the biggest friction points or inefficiencies you notice?
3) If you could design the “perfect world” setup, what would it look like?

Appreciate your answers! Thanks in advance
Nuno

Definitely my wife. The rest of the tools seem great to me.

hah! Gotta leave you to your own devices on that one.

Does she fly with you though?
My fiancee is terrified of flying unfortunately.

When we dated, she would go willingly.
When engaged, grudgingly.
Now we are in the game over phase.

Hmmm... I think "investing time to look for a solution, which will then look for a problem". I think back to the time in my life when I was a student, and I rented. This was a time when every telephone was connected to the wall by a wire, and a VOR was a modern navaid. I had no problem writing my bookings and lessons on my calendar. I kept a paper pilot log, and training record. My flight planning was done, as needed, on a paper form, which I took with me in the airplane for the flight.

I admit, I use Excel now to maintain my pilot log (it does all the sums nicely!). I use Foreflight if I need to flight plan ('cause paper charts seem hard to get these days), and I use GPS as a reference to flights I have planned ('cause I'm lazy about ETA calculations). Over the decades of flying, and providing a lot of advanced GA training, I have learned to be wary of trainees who come out to the airplane tech'd out to the max, and seemingly dependent upon "solutions" to aide their flying. I observed that in some cases these were a distraction from the task of managing a flight in one's mind, being mentally prepared, and the executing the flight from skill and experience rather than aids. My worst example of "please put that tech away" was when I told my candidate that we would not need his Ipad for circuits that day (as it blocked my use of dual controls. I put it in the seat back pocket for the flying, to find that my leaning back in the seat had broken it - Oh well, we hadn't needed it anyway, and I paid for the Ipad. Sure, if you're planning a Transatlantic ferry flight, there's going to be a lot of planning, and a bunch of tech. If you're flying to a new place for the $100 hamburger, a review of the chart, W&B, and flight plan, along with notes about the airports. If you're flying circuits, W&B, and the frequency, then focus on your piloting skills - don't distract yourself with needless tech.

If you are an active, aspiring pilot, there is so much you can learn to maintain and advance your skills in aviation, my advice is to devote your time to those aviation disciplines, rather than trying to devise a tech'y solution to something that generations of pilots have managed in mind, or on a straight forward personal calendar.

I write any necessary flying responsibilities on my calendar, and review tasks and expiry dates every month or so, to assure I keep everything current (including owning the plane)

I happily have no friction points in flying at all. If anything, I find myself thinking (as yesterday) it's been a week or two since I flew the plane, so I should take it up for half an hour - no friction going flying.

My perfect setup (for GA VFR) is Foreflight if I need to flightplan, review paper documents for validity and correctness, check weather in the Environment Canada/NAV Canada websites, maybe use a handheld GPS in flight, and record my flying in Excel, and the airplane logbook (paper) after I fly. If I plan a big trip, I check everything before that flight/trip. If needed, I document a plan for the flight on paper (perhaps printed from MS Word, if I typed it out). So, for me, I have found the perfect setup - simple.

Like Pilot DAR I've been around aviation for a long time and frankly can't see your problem. I administer the maintenance program for my aircraft. I have sixteen log books with the latter ones backed up with an electronic product. I use SkyDemon for flight planning (which now has its own logbook) and am quite happy having all those items administered separately. My licences are stored on PC and on a cloud for remote access.

I doubt you'd succeed in creating an app that caters for online booking when so many schools, such as yours it would seem, prefer to use the phone.

Good luck in your efforts anyway.

Next time you think about going flying - don't - just sit down on the grass outside your aircraft and think - I have just force landed

Scenario - broken leg - no phone - coat? rain? snow? Late afternoon to dark

No shelter from the aircraft - and all your tech is in cockpit - dead

How is it going for you? Stay sat down for an hour ....

Now consider the only change is - no broken leg - so you could walk to safety - do you have a paper map?

I could go on - but you know the idea

I'm sure Pilot DAR has a long list of survival stories from his part of the world - we are close to the basic elements when we fly - it's not all about the tech

There's good advice!

On my long trips into the wilderness in my amphibian, I would wear an inflatable lifejacket with a lot of pockets. Everything I would need for an overnight stay on shore was in those pockets. During all of those trips (including one which took me camping 93 miles from the nearest other person) I never needed any of it. But I had learned from friend's events that being prepared independent of any tech [in the plane] was wise. What you have on your person when you exit the wreck is all you have. Toward this end, I always carried my cell phone in a water proof bag, clipped to my lifejacket. It would stay protected until I needed it. (sat phone for very distant trips).

It was a good concept, though had a flaw: When I was ejected through the windshield into the lake, the life jacket was torn, and the phone bag sank. My wife told me that she phoned it for three days, until it stopped ringing, so the waterproof bag worked. Fortunately, the crash of my student and I was just near the dock, so were were rescued promptly.

All of this to say, that I think about occupant safety and serviceability first and foremost while flying. I do not bury myself in minutia about tech and flight planning/navigation and record keeping. When you're flying safely, and there is a minor information gap, filling that gap is pretty easy these days. Here, you're posting to a group, many of whom (including me) learned to fly in an airplane which did not have an electrical system. The chart was folded to show the route to be flown on the outside, and stuffed inside your shirt so the airflow did not catch it (I lost a few). And, we made it! Sure, airspace is a little more complex in some places these days, but some flights can be very simple, think about how to keep them that way!

I don't find it causes friction. I keep a good old Pooleys blue covered log book I have had since my first flight in 1990 (about 700 hours ago), I use SkyDemon for my flight planning and it plus a 1:500 K chart for Nav (also foreflight and an old sectional when I am in the USA) my club has an internet booking system (quite clunky) and there is consultation about whether we really need it

For my license, my PPL won't expire any time soon and I can easily remember that my 2 years expires next April and I need to get an hour with an instructor some time before then. My medical declaration is good or a couple of years yet

I don't find it hard or stressful at all to have 4 (or 5) sources of my info..

Hey gents,

I appreciate that you took time to read my post and to share your thoughts.
And like some of you said or hinted to, you don't see the problem. That's valid feedback, I'm also not sure there is one and that is what I am trying to validate. I'd be a fool to splurge my time and money into this based on "muh feelings".
Human factors matter as well (as we all know), as flight schools / charter companies may remain keen on phone bookings even if provided the technology to change this.

I remain interested in finding a problem that more people may have, and more people may want to see resolved. I love flying, and I love computer systems. It doesn't need to be big or grand, just real and which could actually be helpful.

And to those of you who own planes, awesome! I'm in the renting trenches, and I don't expect I'll move out for the time being - building a family & buying a house will take precedence. But hopefully one day! a C182 would be awesome. For now I'll stick to the flight school's catalog of DA40s and C172s, some of them old enough to have gone to school with my parents.

Cheers!

I reccomend buying a flying school, my receptionist/ secretary does all of that! Our FIs have a great life with minimum paperwork too.

The "problem" I perceive is that for some pilots, they land, go home, and forget about aviation. Sure, family, life and work need attention, and will take that away from aviation as a recreational activity. But, modelling my accidental success early in my flying career, be at the the airport as much as you can. The "problem" is that people think that they can advance their pilot skills away from the airport. Yes, one can do valuable research at home, some in books, some on the computer, but..... I see so much nonsense available on my computer, which is actually an educational dis service, and I have to un teach when I train someone.

In the old days, as a young person, I would spend every hour I could hanging around the airport. I would scrub airplane bellies, and pump gas, just for the opportunity to be around airplanes. In hindsight, that was very well rewarded, in seeing first hand, how aviation happened, and meeting the people. I learned to fly there, in what were at the time brand new 152's and some older 150's. Indeed, I did my first solo in the first 152 imported to Canada. Back in the day, there'd be many pilots and people around to share experience with and chat. Now, I see people come, go flying, and go. I suppose that they go home to use social media on their computer. From a PPRuNe perspective, I can't complain about that, and PPRuNe is a cumulative awesome source of pilot wisdom and experience - but it is not hands on mentoring and sharing experience. It is not new person with filthy hands from cleaning an airplane, who just found a crack in a skin, and will now learn from having a small part in the process to resolve the defect.

Worse is that I am now flight testing other people's airplanes with really advanced avionics systems, and finding logic issues in the inter relationship between software design, and real world compatibility with a specific configuration of airplane. It would be unfair for me to opine on the skills of the person who developed the logic for the software, but I fear that in some cases, their pilot experience was minimal, and their flight test and human factors experience even less.

So, our "problem" is pilots using more tech to actually simply fly less. They may be PIC of an airplane, but are they flying it? Or monitoring it? In my opinion, making more software is less likely to improve that, as people actually piloting more, particularly airwork and refresher training. So, is the solution, an app on a pilot's phone which pops up before each flight to remind the pilot that it's been a while since they practiced XX maneuver, and today's flying should be devoted to that?

I understand, and I think you're right.
However I cannot propose that I can bring that environment back.
I can imagine how cool it must've been. I did offer my local flight school (who are awesome and with whom I have a great relationship) help over Summer, would've been a perfect excuse to spend more time with planes, and doing whatever they'd need on the ground. Unfortunately it is not as easy, nowadays. (Regulations, insurances, and whatnot).
But every chance I get to go with the CFIs into the hangars, to follow-up on the planes being repaired / overhauled, and to see them during the process, as well as to helping move them back into the hangar if I've flown their last flight of the day, priceless. Could see me doing this every day!

But back to the topic, I am not proposing to toss out a new Sky Demon / in-flight app, or much less to re-invent the wheel.
I love flying, and I fly. I love computers, and I work with them - and I am motivated to at least trying to find actual problems (and not just easy money) that I could try to solve. I also believe technology does not have to de-humanise processes, but should be a supporting instrument.

About your story with the first C152 imported into Canada - awesome! Late 70s I assume? Does the airframe still fly?
Almost as old as the oldest 172 that I fly!

Yes, the flying club where I learned to fly was one of the larger Cessna dealers in Canada, so they got dibs on new airplanes. Word was out that the 152 was coming. Upon arrival, it sat proudly on the lawn for a few days in spring 1977, while it awaited some import details to be completed, then it was put on the line with their other dozen airplanes. It was a crappy day windy and raining, and I was just doing circuits pre solo. I asked for the 152, my instructor said yes, so we took it. After some circuits, he got out, and said take it for one circuit, and bring it back. It was really roomy without him! The airplane had 33 hours total time since new - mostly the ferry time from Wichita.

My mom was there with me that day. She told me that my instructor was challenged by the Chief Flying Instructor: "You sent him solo in the brand new one!?!"

Someone photo'd me taxiing it that summer:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e4ce024630.jpg

A friend of mine not too far away owns it now, I understand that it has more than 16,000 hours on it. Knowing him, it's in beautiful condition...

Cooooooooooooooooool! Awesome photo, funny to see how these planes actually looked like when brand new. Really enjoyed reading the story, I could feel along with you.
I was that guy whose instructor told „now take‘er up alone“ barely 1,5 years ago, albeit not in a new C152, rather in a C172N with around 11000 hours at the time. The very same plane I passed my PPL check ride with, also my most flown one.


My local flight school is in the last stages of fully overhauling and modernising another C172N. Cannot wait to take‘er up. Brand new interior to go with it too, looks brand new while still looking old - if that makes sense.
Also quite funny that we get a mix of Reims built and Cessna built planes, very cool to know the latter ones enjoyed a life overseas.

I‘ve always rented planes with the good ol‘ six pack, but looking forward to trying the G1000 soon on the NVFR training.

Yes, Iwanttofly,

I've been doing this for a while, and flown a lot of airplanes over the decades, including a few brand new ones, and the highest time (I was aware of), a Cessna 207 with 19,800 hours on the airframe.

Another test pilot and I sort of trained ourselves on the G1000 in a DA-42 we were delivering to the test facility. It works not too bad of you change seats each leg, so one pilot can concentrate on learning the tech, while the other pilot flies, and vaguely pays attention to the tech. Trying to teach yourself can be daunting. I had to sort of relearn a newer Garmin glass for some Caravan test flying I did, and since have flown VFR quite a few Garmin, and a few other systems. I'm told that my next project has Dynon in it, so another new thing to learn!

I have many observations about that tech, and am indeed in the midst of writing a report to Transport Canada to comment on some deficiencies and incompatibilities I have noticed. Gee I wish there was a app for "correct glass cockpit logic oversights", but that's not going to happen any time soon - we just have to train well to assure the pilot is still ahead of the tech!

My wife handles all of the paperwork, plus nav, radio, altimeter settings, squawks, fuel state etc, and spells me when I feel like folding my arms and watching the scenery. Friction can arise if on a whim, I change my mind mid-flight about where we're heading.