Flight department software is one system that holds the work a flight operation does every day: the trip schedule, each aircraft’s maintenance status, crew qualifications and duty time, the release decision and risk assessment, passenger manifests, and the costs and invoices that follow a trip. Its value comes from connecting those records. When a trip is booked, the same system can tell you whether the aircraft has an inspection coming due before the trip, whether the crew you picked is qualified and rested, and what the trip ended up costing.
A Part 91 corporate department and a Part 135 charter operator both need that core. They differ in which rules apply to crew duty and training, how they’re allowed to charge for flights, and who the customer is. The sections below cover each area, the differences, the signs you’ve outgrown spreadsheets, and what to check before you buy.
What does flight department software do?
The work falls into six areas. A system that covers only some of them leaves you copying data between tools, where errors creep in.
| Area | What the software keeps | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduling | Trips built leg by leg, with times, airports, aircraft and crew | What is flying, when, and with whom? |
| Aircraft and maintenance | Hours, cycles, inspections, due items, defects and deferrals | Is this aircraft legal and available for the trip? |
| Crew duty and currency | Certificates, medicals, training records, flight and duty time | Is this pilot qualified, current and rested for this leg? |
| Release and risk | Pre-flight checks and a risk assessment, with who approved what | Has someone with authority signed off on this trip? |
| Passengers | Passenger records, travel documents and manifests | Who is aboard, and can they enter the destination country? |
| Accounting and invoicing | Fuel, expenses, receipts, trip cost, invoices and payments | What did the trip cost, and who pays for it? |
Scheduling
The schedule is the hub everything else hangs on. A trip is a set of legs, each with a departure and arrival airport, times and an aircraft, and each leg needs a crew. Good scheduling handles each airport’s local time for you and keeps a history of who changed what.
Checking is what separates software from a calendar. Every change to a trip should be checked against the aircraft’s status and the crew’s qualifications and duty limits, and any problem should be named on the spot rather than found the morning of the flight.
Aircraft and maintenance
Each aircraft needs a current picture of its maintenance status. Under 14 CFR 91.417(a)(2), the owner or operator must keep records of “the total time in service of the airframe, each engine, each propeller, and each rotor,” the status of life-limited parts, the “current inspection status of the aircraft,” and the “current status of applicable airworthiness directives (AD)” including, for a recurring AD, “the time and date when the next action is required.”
Inspections come due by calendar, by hours or by cycles. Section 91.409(a) requires an annual inspection “within the preceding 12 calendar months,” and 91.409(b) adds a 100-hour inspection for an aircraft carrying people for hire. Large airplanes, turbojet and turboprop multiengine airplanes and turbine-powered rotorcraft must instead be inspected under “an inspection program selected under the provisions of paragraph (f)” (91.409(e)). Whatever the program, the software should show each item’s due point, tell you how long until it’s reached at your current rate of flying, and record defects and deferrals so the aircraft’s real state is visible to the scheduler.
Crew duty and currency
Crew records cover two separate questions. Currency and qualification: does this pilot hold the right certificate, medical, type rating and recurrent training for this aircraft today? Duty and rest: has this pilot had enough rest before this assignment, and will this leg keep them inside the limits?
The rules behind both questions depend on how you operate, covered in the next section. Either way, the software should list each person’s expiring items with the most urgent first and flag a pilot assigned to an aircraft they aren’t qualified on.
Release and risk
A release is the point where someone decides the trip may go. It pulls the other areas together: the aircraft is airworthy and has no open defect that grounds it, the crew is legal, and the trip’s risks have been assessed. Many operators score each trip with a flight risk assessment tool and require a higher level of approval above a set score.
A release should not survive a change. If the aircraft or the crew changes after a trip is released, the trip should go back to unreleased and be checked again.
Passengers
Passenger records hold contact details and, for international trips, passports. Each leg needs a manifest. Charter operators have a specific requirement here: for multiengine aircraft, 14 CFR 135.63(c) requires a load manifest prepared before each takeoff that includes “the number of passengers,” weights, center of gravity, the origin and destination, and “identification of crew members and their crew position assignments.”
The software should encrypt passport numbers and dates of birth and record who viewed them.
Accounting and invoicing
Every trip produces costs: fuel on each leg, landing and handling fees, crew hotels and meals, catering. A department needs those costs collected against the trip, with receipts, so it can answer what the trip cost. A charter operator also needs to quote the trip before it flies and invoice the client after.
How Part 91 flight departments differ from charter operators
The six areas are the same for both; the rules inside them differ. For the full regulatory picture, see our comparison of Part 91, Part 135 and Part 91K.
| Part 91 corporate department | Part 135 charter operator | |
|---|---|---|
| Customer | The company’s own people and guests | Outside clients who pay for the flight |
| Charging for flights | Limited (see below) | The business itself, under an operating certificate |
| Crew flight and duty limits | Usually the company’s own policy | Set by regulation, for example §135.267 |
| Pilot testing | §61.58 proficiency checks for aircraft that need two pilots or are turbojet-powered | §135.293 tests and checks every 12 calendar months, plus the §135.297 instrument check every 6 for a pilot in command under IFR |
| Operator’s pilot records | No list like §135.63 for a corporate department | Prescribed contents under §135.63(a)(4) |
| Money flow | Trip costs and internal chargebacks | Quotes, invoices and client payments |
Charging for flights
A corporate department under Part 91 Subpart F can carry “officials, employees, guests, and property of a company” when the carriage is “within the scope of, and incidental to, the business of the company” and “no charge, assessment or fee is made for the carriage in excess of the cost of owning, operating, and maintaining the airplane” (14 CFR 91.501(b)(5)). Under a time sharing agreement, the charge is limited to the expenses listed in 91.501(d), such as fuel, crew travel, landing fees and “an additional charge equal to 100 percent of the expenses listed in paragraph (d)(1),” the fuel and oil line.
That makes a department’s accounting about cost: what each trip cost, how it’s charged back to divisions, and documentation for tax treatment.
A charter operator sells the flight. Section 119.5(g) says “No person may operate as a direct air carrier or as a commercial operator without, or in violation of, an appropriate certificate and appropriate operations specifications.” Its accounting starts before the trip with a quote built from rates, and ends with an invoice and a payment.
Crew duty and rest
This is the biggest difference in day-to-day software use. A Part 135 operator flying unscheduled one- and two-pilot crews works under §135.267: 500 flight hours in a calendar quarter, 800 in two consecutive quarters, 1,400 in a calendar year, 8 or 10 hours of flight time in 24 consecutive hours depending on crew size, and “at least 10 consecutive hours of rest during the 24-hour period that precedes the planned completion time of the assignment.” The operator must also provide “at least 13 rest periods of at least 24 consecutive hours each in each calendar quarter.” Fractional programs under Part 91 Subpart K have their own set in §91.1057 through §91.1061. Our guide to Part 135 duty time limits goes through each rule.
A Part 91 corporate department’s duty limits are usually its own policy, written into its operations manual. In software terms, a department needs to enter its own numbers and have them checked, while a charter operator needs the regulation’s numbers built in and checked on every schedule change, because a violation is a certificate problem.
Training and testing
A charter pilot under Part 135 must pass a knowledge test and a competency check “since the beginning of the 12th calendar month before that service” (§135.293), and a pilot in command under IFR needs an instrument proficiency check “since the beginning of the 6th calendar month before that service” (§135.297). The certificate holder keeps a record for each pilot including “the date and result of each of the initial and recurrent competency tests and proficiency and route checks” (§135.63(a)(4)(vi)).
A Part 91 pilot in command of an aircraft that needs more than one pilot or is turbojet-powered needs a proficiency check “within the preceding 12 calendar months” and one in the particular type “within the preceding 24 calendar months” (§61.58(a)). Departments that add their own recurrent items on top of these need somewhere to track them too. Software for either kind of operator should let you define the training items you track, with their intervals, rather than fixing a list.
Signs you’ve outgrown spreadsheets and whiteboards
Spreadsheets and a whiteboard in the scheduling office work for a long time for a one-aircraft department. They stop working gradually. These signs usually show up first:
- The schedule lives in more than one place. The whiteboard, a shared calendar and someone’s phone don’t agree, and you find out when a pilot shows up for a trip that moved.
- Due dates are found, not shown. Someone has to open the maintenance spreadsheet and scan it to learn what’s coming due. Nothing warns the scheduler that a trip next week runs past an inspection.
- Duty time is added up by hand. Before accepting a trip, somebody counts rest hours on paper across time zones. For a charter operator, that hand count is what stands between you and a §135.267 violation.
- Expirations surprise you. A medical, a recurrent class or a passport expires and nobody noticed until the week of a trip.
- Nobody can say who approved a trip. The release happened in a hallway conversation or a text message, and there’s no record of who signed off or on what information.
- Trip costs arrive weeks late. Receipts sit in pilots’ flight bags. The trip’s total is a guess until month end, and it’s wrong when late handling invoices arrive.
- One person knows how it all works. The spreadsheet has formulas only its author understands. When that person is on vacation, the office slows down.
- Changes leave no trail. When an auditor or your insurer asks what changed on a trip and when, the honest answer is that the spreadsheet doesn’t say.
When most of these describe your office, keeping records in sync is costing more than software would. Our post on running the schedule from a spreadsheet shows how far a well-built sheet can go first.
What to look for in flight department software
Use this list when you compare systems. Ask for a demo with your own aircraft, a real trip and one of your pilots’ records, not the vendor’s sample data. For a fuller version to work through, see our aircraft management software checklist.
Fit to your operation
- It handles your operating rules: Part 91 policy limits, Part 135, Part 91K, or a mix.
- Duty limits are checked on every schedule change, not only when you run a report.
- You can define your own training items, risk questions and approval thresholds.
Connected records
- A trip checks the aircraft’s status and the crew’s qualifications and duty when it’s saved.
- A released trip goes back to unreleased when something material changes.
- A defect or deferral on an aircraft shows up for the scheduler, not only in the maintenance view.
- Costs and expenses are collected against the trip they belong to.
Trustworthy records
- Every change to a trip is kept in its history, with who made it.
- Flight log corrections are kept alongside the original entry, not written over it.
- Overrides of a warning are recorded with a name and a reason.
Security and access
- Roles decide who can see and change what.
- Passport numbers, dates of birth and certificate numbers are encrypted, and viewing them is logged.
- Your data is kept apart from other customers’ data.
Practical matters
- You can import your fleet, maintenance items, people and training records from a spreadsheet, so you don’t retype everything.
- It works on a phone’s browser for crews on the road.
- Pricing is clear about what’s counted (aircraft, users or flights) and what happens when you add or remove one.
- There’s a trial long enough to run a few real trips through it.
Flight department software in Avion Desk
Every time you save a trip in Avion Desk, it checks the aircraft, the crew and their duty, and names any problem it finds; an admin’s override is recorded with a note. See the trips and scheduling features.
Maintenance items come due by date or by counter, and a forecast from each aircraft’s recent use tells you when they’ll be reached. See the aircraft and maintenance features.
Duty and rest are checked whenever the schedule moves, against a Part 91 company policy you can edit, and the plan for charter operators adds Part 135 (§135.267) and Part 91K duty rules. See the crew features and pricing.
A trip is released only after its checks, the aircraft’s state and a risk assessment pass, and above a threshold you set it needs a named approver. See the release and risk features.
To try it, start a free trial and build one of next week’s trips with its aircraft and crew to see the checks run, or request a demo.
Frequently asked questions
What is flight department software?
It’s a system that keeps a flight operation’s schedule, aircraft maintenance status, crew qualifications and duty time, trip releases, passenger manifests and trip costs in one place, so that a change in one area is checked against the others.
Do Part 91 flight departments need the same software as charter operators?
They need the same core areas, but different rules inside them. A charter operator needs Part 135 duty limits and testing intervals checked by the system, plus quoting and invoicing for outside clients. A Part 91 department needs its own duty policy checked and accounting built around trip cost and chargebacks (91.501(b)(5)).
When should a flight department stop using spreadsheets?
When the schedule lives in more than one place, due dates and expirations are found by scanning a sheet instead of being shown to you, duty time is counted by hand, or nobody can say who approved a trip. Any one of those can be managed; several at once usually means records are falling out of sync.
What should I ask in a flight department software demo?
Ask to build one of your real trips with your own aircraft and pilot, then change the crew after release and see what happens. Ask how duty limits are checked, how training items are defined, how data is imported from your spreadsheets, and who can see passport numbers.
How much does flight department software cost?
Pricing models vary: per aircraft, per user or by package. See our guide to flight department software cost for what to compare and what to ask about adding or removing aircraft.
This article explains the rules in plain language and isn’t legal advice; the regulation text governs.
