“Crew days off are approved and posted to the schedule board by the 20th day of the previous month,” said Josh Carstensen, Crew Coordination Manager. Since pilots aren’t on a regular Monday through Friday schedule, their days out of the office require a little more planning upfront. For days off in August, for example, crewmembers must make the request by the 15th of July, and they’re then posted and approved by the 20th of July for planning purposes. Aircraft with two and three person crews have their own scheduling systems, and notations follow in the scheduling board. “For three-person crews, we’ll notate who is on duty each day and highlighting any crew swap days,” Carstensen said. “That’s important, because if we have a three-day trip that’s over a crew swap day where one crewmember is going off-duty and the other is coming on, that helps the Charter and Fleet Optimization departments know what they can schedule that aircraft for. Proper notice helps everyone plan more effectively.”

Scheduled Trip

When a trip is scheduled – whether for a Jet Linx aircraft owner, a Jet Card client, or a wholesale charter customer – a series of events is set into place to ensure that every flight operates at the highest level.

“When a Jet Linx client schedules a trip, Client Services schedules the member trip into a generic aircraft on the operations board, depending on size,” Kemp explained. The generic aircraft in FOS are divided by size (Light, Mid, Super Mid, or Heavy) and contain trip information and preferences. The Client Services teams assigns FBOs (or Fixed Base Operators) and adds passenger names, catering requests, and ground transportation needs. When an aircraft owner schedules a trip, a similar process kicks off – but the trip is scheduled in the actual aircraft in FOS instead of a generic profile. “We also add notes in an area called special handling, which are any special needs for the trip: if there will be a dog on board, the purpose of the trip, if there will be a lap child on board, or something trip-specific that the other departments will need to be aware of,” she continued. Ideally, a firm departure time will be set, but a trip can be scheduled with a more general note of ‘morning’ or ‘8 am to 10 am,’ for example. Jet Card clients are guaranteed aircraft availability 24/7/365, and as such they are able to set firm departure dates and times. “One of the benefits of a Jet Card is that you have that guarantee,” Kemp noted. “If you want to leave at 10 a.m., you can do that. We may have a little more flexibility in scheduling with an aircraft owner.” Aircraft owners make their aircraft available to Jet Card clients, and as such usually allow some flexibility in flight times to make sure the Jet Card trips are accommodated.

Once Client Services has recorded the trip in FOS, Flight Coordination and Fleet Optimization begin working on the trip. “Flight Coordination will check the new trip checklist items required, and Fleet Optimization will begin to look at aircraft options to complete the trip, looking at both in-fleet and off-fleet options,” Kemp said. “On average, a tail number is assigned three to five days out from the trip. We try to average five days out whenever possible.” If the trip is booked within a week of the departure, Crew Coordination works on assigning crew immediately, while Client Services checks the operations board to see if there is anything that will need further research, whether crew days off or a scheduled maintenance event.

Post Trip

When the airplane lands, the crew checks in with Flight Following and reports that the aircraft is safely on the ground at the correct destination: the crew has the same 15-minute window to check in, or Flight Following will call the crew for details. “At this point we ask how the passengers are doing, how the crew’s doing, ask if there were any issues with the aircraft and any feedback they can give us on how the trip went,” Reese explained. The crew completes post-leg and post-trip duties, including updating Flight Coordination with any feedback, reporting any discrepancies to maintenance, and tidying up and restocking the aircraft. “This helps us prepare if there’s a trip scheduled in the aircraft for the next day,” Carstensen explained. “We get all the information gathered, and that helps us know if we need to call Maintenance or get an overnight cleaning done, and to do what we can to mitigate any delays for the next day.” The crew logs post-flight times into FOS mobile, or provides times to Flight Coordination over the phone if they are unable to input the times. “That allows us to accurately determine crew duty time and verify crew duty time and flight time, from a regulation standpoint,” Reese said.

After the trip, feedback from the crew and passengers is reviewed in an in-depth process for Service Improvement Opportunities (SIOs). “The process can really be started at any point in time, but the day of is when most of these opportunities – whether there’s a negative, neutral, or positive impact on a flight – are going to be created,” Donnelly explained. The process was created to have a tracking method for each flight, and to share information more freely across the entire company. “It’s meant to be updated and give real-time updates on the progress and conclusion,” she continued. “We want to use it to measure client sentiment, both good and bad. We also have a monthly meeting that [Kemp] runs with NOC and Base team members.” The meeting reviews anything that could be considered a negative – even something that may not have had an impact on the specific flight in questions, but that could affect a future flight, like a late positioning. “We can learn from any potential missteps,” Donnelly explained. She emphasized the importance of real-time updates for the SIO process, because a solution can only help a future flight if all team members are aware of what the solution is. “If something happens at 9 a.m. that is resolved at 10 a.m. but it’s not updated until 6 p.m., the process is really useless to us.”

The Client Services team greets the flight, and will do a follow-up call for any feedback and to check in on any SIOs. They then complete the billing process, and work to prepare the invoice for accounting. “Charter does very similar things,” Donnelly explained. “They follow up with the broker and get any feedback on how the flight went, verifying times and getting the invoicing ready.” Fleet Optimization prepares invoices for off-fleet vendors.

The expert teams at Jet Linx analyze every aspect of each trip to make sure that each one is performed as smoothly as possible. Each piece falls into place in a meticulously calibrated pattern, following FAA regulations and our own company best practices. While there are still aspects of every flight that can’t be controlled – like the weather – it certainly isn’t for lack of trying.