Hours, calendar, or both
Most checks are due by flight hours, by calendar time, or by whichever comes first. A 100-hour inspection depends on how much the aircraft flies; an annual inspection or a document renewal depends on the date. A trainer that flies hard can reach an hours limit long before its calendar date, and a quiet aircraft the reverse.
So each check needs to track both, and the “due” figure must move every time the aircraft flies. If hours are copied by hand from the flight log into a maintenance sheet, the forecast is only as fresh as the last copy.
Your intervals come from your approved maintenance programme and your engineers, not from software. Check current requirements with your engineers and the DGCA’s published regulations.
Make “due soon” visible before it’s overdue
A due date in a spreadsheet only helps if someone looks at it. Better practice is to show what is coming up on the screen people already use, with enough warning to plan around it:
- Show remaining hours and days, not just the due date, so planners can see how many sorties are left.
- Warn in stages, such as a few weeks out, a few days out and on the day, rather than with one alert.
- Put the warning where the booking happens, so nobody schedules an aircraft past its limit.
- Treat documents (registration, airworthiness, insurance) the same way as checks.
Snags, AOG and the grounding decision
When a pilot finds a defect, three things need to happen quickly. The defect has to be recorded. A qualified person has to decide whether the aircraft can fly. And if it can’t, everyone who might book it has to know.
- 1
Record the snag at the source
The pilot or instructor logs it against the aircraft, with the time, before leaving the ramp.
- 2
Make the status change explicit
If the aircraft is grounded or AOG, change its status in the system, not just in a chat message.
- 3
Let the status reach bookings
Anyone trying to book or dispatch the aircraft should be warned automatically.
- 4
Close it with a sign-off
The aircraft returns to service only when the work is recorded and signed off by the responsible engineer.
Keep a history you can actually produce
Sooner or later someone will ask for an aircraft’s history, whether that’s a partner, an auditor, a buyer or your own team. A good record answers four things for every change: who made it, when, what it was before, and what it was after. If entries can be edited silently, the record can’t be trusted. The history should only ever be added to.
A simple weekly routine
- Review every aircraft’s next check by remaining hours and days.
- Go through open snags and confirm each grounded aircraft’s status is current.
- Check document expiries for the next 60 days.
- Book maintenance slots for anything due within the next two weeks of planned flying.
AVops does most of this routine automatically. See aircraft maintenance tracking in AVops.