Small ideas of mine

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ADAM-007
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Small ideas of mine

Post by ADAM-007 » Sun Oct 25, 2020 9:02 am

Hi all! Joe asked me to submit this here to see what others think of it:

Hi Joe,

Small list of requests as I think of them. I wondered what your thoughts are.

Would an audit log of the airline be able to be added at all? I feel it would be useful in the future for me to be able to see who's doing what with their fleets in the future.

What would be the chances of having a auto-type rate sort of thing. Or a separate permission from the

'Handle Pilots (Accept, Kick, Typeratings, ...)'

For them to set their own type ratings without being able to kick and accept other pilots?

Thanks,
Adam.
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joefremont
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Re: Small ideas of mine

Post by joefremont » Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:54 pm

Hi Adam,

let me just reiterate what I think you are suggesting.

First is an improved audit log for what a pilot is doing in within a VA.

This would not be difficult but might involve a lot of busy work, adding code to each of the places where a log entry would be needed. Other than buying/selling aircraft what are you thinking of?

Second giving the ability for a pilot to manage there own type rating.

I have though at times that the 'Handle Pilot permission should be split into two one for Accept, Kick and a different one for Type ratings. I had though about giving the ability to assign TR's by fleet, but have held off as as you start getting all the different overlapping ways to assign type ratings it might get hard to manage, especially when you have individual assigned TR's and rank assigned TR's.

Now the ability to handle ones own type rating is something that had not occurred to be before and I wonder how many other VA's would find that useful.

What do others think?
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Cat
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Re: Small ideas of mine

Post by Cat » Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:26 pm

I think the type rating by rank covers it all for us. With our full Career Path in place now, type ratings are given automatically as pilots progress through the ranks with the more high performance aircraft requiring "qualification" (training) flights on that type first before the pilot is given the full type rating. For example, pilots must fly a training flight in the Boeing 737-800 to show they can land the thing without smashing it to bits and when they do, they are given the type ratings for all 737's. Yes we have to do this manually but we then maintain far more control. Logged crashes are not only expensive but reputation killers that affect every pilot trying to fly full airplanes. It takes 20 good flights to repair the reputation damage caused by one careless pilot. In a large airline where they are flying many flights a day, no big deal. For smaller operators, it's a very big deal.

I would be very leery of allowing anyone but our most senior pilots the ability to pick and choose their type ratings and by the time they reach Senior Captain level, they have them all anyway.

PS - actually one can make the training section automated by having that rank named differently, say Captain TR with automated promotion after satisfying the promotion parameters to full Captain. The only problem with that for us is the promotion by rank does not include anyway to count "good landings" - better than -400fpm so we prefer to promote our pilots out of training manually after reviewing their performance to make sure they are ready to advance.

Regarding the fleet tracking thing, we have our own 3rd party spreadsheets where we not only track every fleet, but every transaction on every aircraft and keep a "master ledger" where we can see the entire airline financial and aircraft location/service dates, etc. in a glance. This is far more work than any normal VA does (and we've been called crazy for it LOL) but there is no way I would expect FSAirlines to do this work for us. So I think for VA operators who want more than what FSA provides, it's time to buck up and do the work yourself like we do. Once people see the amount of paperwork required to keep such reports, most VA operators would simply say 'oh heck no'. :lol:
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ADAM-007
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Re: Small ideas of mine

Post by ADAM-007 » Sun Oct 25, 2020 8:03 pm

joefremont wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:54 pm
First is an improved audit log for what a pilot is doing in within a VA.

This would not be difficult but might involve a lot of busy work, adding code to each of the places where a log entry would be needed. Other than buying/selling aircraft what are you thinking of?
As much as is possible for stuff within the VA would be really nice as we seem to get a few random actions silly things that happen where I'd love to see who's doing it if only to educate the guys in running fleets better.
joefremont wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 5:54 pm
Second giving the ability for a pilot to manage there own type rating.

I have though at times that the 'Handle Pilot permission should be split into two one for Accept, Kick and a different one for Type ratings. I had though about giving the ability to assign TR's by fleet, but have held off as as you start getting all the different overlapping ways to assign type ratings it might get hard to manage, especially when you have individual assigned TR's and rank assigned TR's.

Now the ability to handle ones own type rating is something that had not occurred to be before and I wonder how many other VA's would find that useful.
Type Rating by fleet is a bit excessive. The type rating by rank is okay but again has to be updated manually by one of us.

Simply separating the permission would solve our small issue very quickly.
Cat wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:26 pm
I would be very leery of allowing anyone but our most senior pilots the ability to pick and choose their type ratings and by the time they reach Senior Captain level, they have them all anyway.
I'd like to add the permission to my hub owners mainly rather than everyone but at the same time I don't want these guys to be able to kick people.
Cat wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 7:26 pm
Regarding the fleet tracking thing, we have our own 3rd party spreadsheets where we not only track every fleet, but every transaction on every aircraft and keep a "master ledger" where we can see the entire airline financial and aircraft location/service dates, etc. in a glance. This is far more work than any normal VA does (and we've been called crazy for it LOL) but there is no way I would expect FSAirlines to do this work for us. So I think for VA operators who want more than what FSA provides, it's time to buck up and do the work yourself like we do. Once people see the amount of paperwork required to keep such reports, most VA operators would simply say 'oh heck no'. :lol:
I'm not asking for specifics here. Something like this:

PILOT A ---- Instant Transfer ---- B744 ---- ICAO
PILOT B ---- Aircraft Purchase ---- A35K ---- ICAO
PILOT C ---- Changed PILOT D Typerating

Many thanks for the replies chaps I hope what I am getting at is coming across well and not like I'm being lazy and wanting Joe to fix my laziness :')
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Cat
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Re: Small ideas of mine

Post by Cat » Mon Oct 26, 2020 2:32 pm

I'd like to add the permission to my hub owners mainly rather than everyone but at the same time I don't want these guys to be able to kick people.
Oh yes I see your point where type rating admin permits are tied to other duties such as accepting new hires, kicking pilots, etc.
The type rating by rank is okay but again has to be updated manually by one of us.
Yes I have noted that as well when a new type is purchased, it defaults to NO to all ranks. So there is some manual maintenance required to add it to ranks as needed when said aircraft is purchased, but it sure beats adding it to every pilot in the fleet one by one.
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