Aircraft Maintenance & v3.3.14
Sam Webster
Software Developer
Aircraft & Aircraft Maintenance have had a big overhaul. You can now edit anything, more easily see what items of maintenance are next per aircraft, use Part 2 of the Maintenance Release, set Metric & US units, use custom maintenance time labels, add resource profile pictures, and more. Read on to see what’s in this release.
Maintenance Releases
We have overhauled aircraft maintenance from the ground up. To begin, all parts of the maintenance release are now tied together, so all maintenance items, endorsements and daily inspections are tied to the one maintenance release, like in the real world. Which means over time, as you issue more maintenance releases, you can see a full history just like you would by keeping the wax paper. It also means each time you issue a new MR, you start fresh, keeping things clean and easy to manage.
You can now edit every aspect of aircraft maintenance, so, if you make a mistake, just edit the release, item, endorsement or daily to reflect what the wax paper has. You can also delete any of these should you need to.
Aircraft Manager
The “Aircraft“ page has also been overhauled, making it easier to centrally view and manage your fleet, see aviation specific information about each one and also use “Maintenance Mode” to see which aircraft is next due for maintenance, either by TTIS or date.
When you click or tap on an aircraft, you will then be taken to its profile where you can see a variety of information at a glance, including a graph of recent flights for the past 7 days, maintenance overviews and notes. The maintenance area allows you to view and manage Part 1, 2 & 3 of the maintenance release, see historical maintenance information and see the flights completed in the aircraft. This makes it easy to chase down and edit erroneous numbers, or adjust any maintenance aspect of the flight return, all without leaving the page.
Upcoming Maintenance Report
The “Aircraft Upcoming Maintenance” report has been updated. Head to “Reporting” to take a look. It now shows each aircraft, sorted by what is due next by TTIS or date. While the default view just shows the next item, you can also expand to see any incomplete items, or even all items, including those already completed.
Part 2 - Endorsements
This release also introduces Part 2 of the maintenance release - endorsements - completing the maintenance system to maintain full parity with real wax paper releases. This allows you to not only track any endorsements, but also ground the aircraft via an endorsement should you need to.
Daily Inspections Halved
Like the real world, daily inspections can now be done in two halves, so you can sign one in the morning before the first flight, then total that same one at the end of the day. If you forget and go to sign for the next day you can complete or total yesterday's entry at the same time, much like you would in reality. The system will try to calculate any hours flown when totalling to help out. Just cross reference the wax paper, make any adjustments if needed for flights done outside of Smart, and you’ll be good to go!
Custom Maintenance Labels
We know “logbook” and “maintenance” time often relate to the VDO, Airswitch, Oil Switch, Tacho or other timing device used. Now you can re-label the logbook and maintenance time for each aircraft. Simply edit the existing aircraft, either from the “Aircraft” or “Resources” area, and set the labels accordingly. You can also set custom cycle total labels at the same time for Part 3, or the daily inspections, like tracking landings, oil uplifts, turbine starts, or anything else you may need.
Metric & US Units
You can now explicitly set an aircraft to use either Metric or US Imperial units. This makes it much easier when entering in flight records as you don’t need to do the conversion. We still show a helper conversion with the opposite unit, just in case you need to do a gross error check. Edit your aircraft from “Aircraft” or “Resources” to take advantage - we’ll even do the conversion. Just double check the numbers match the POH.
Decimal Hours
As is common with aviation, 1 hour and 30 minutes is often written as 1.5 hours. So in this release we have made it a system setting where you can decide which way you want to view and edit hours & minutes for aviation. Under “Settings”, then “Aviation” you can choose your “Preferred Hour Representation”, we have set the default to “Decimal Hours” but you can use whole hours and minutes if you wish. This should make tasks like completing a daily inspection much easier, and for many, like what’s written on paper.
Wrap Up
There were many, many tweaks, upgrades and adjustments made to aircraft and aircraft maintenance in this release, many of which were based on your feedback and suggestions. We have also updated the documentation, so make sure to have a read to get the most out of these updates. Please check out the changelog for all the details and keep your eyes peeled for an update on the new roster system really soon. Until next time!