Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about operational availability, compliance projection and how the engine evaluates real-world flight constraints.
Q:What problem does the availability engine solve?
The system continuously evaluates whether a pilot-aircraft combination is legally and operationally available for a requested flight window. It combines scheduling conflicts, compliance expirations, maintenance intervals, aircraft capability and projected flight-hour consumption into a single operational decision pipeline.
Q:Does this replace our existing scheduling or record systems?
No. The platform is designed as a lightweight operational intelligence layer rather than a full ERP replacement. Existing scheduling tools, maintenance trackers and operational records remain the system of record while the engine performs real-time availability and compliance simulations on top of that data.
Q:How much operational data is required to use the engine?
The system is intentionally designed to be flexible. Operators can begin with minimal information such as aircraft schedules and core compliance items or progressively add richer operational data over time. The more accurate and complete the operational inputs become, the more precise the availability projections, compliance warnings and risk simulations will be.
Q:Can the platform work alongside incomplete or evolving operational workflows?
Yes. The MVP is designed to support real-world operational environments where data quality and process maturity vary between operators. The engine can still provide scheduling conflict detection, compliance visibility and projection logic even when some operational records are manually maintained or partially connected.
Q:How does compliance tracking work?
All pilot and aircraft compliance items are processed as standardized requirement objects. The engine supports both date-based expirations such as medical certificates or annual inspections and hour-based limits such as 100-hour inspections or accumulated flight-time restrictions.
Q:What determines whether a flight is GO, RISK or NO-GO?
The engine evaluates every resource through a multi-stage projection pipeline. Hard conflicts such as overlapping schedules, expired compliance items, insufficient turnaround time or exceeded daily flight limits result in NO-GO. Resources approaching expiration thresholds or projected to exceed limits during the requested trip are classified as RISK. Fully compliant and conflict-free combinations are returned as GO.
Q:Does the engine project future maintenance and compliance risk?
Yes. The system simulates cumulative resource consumption across all scheduled flights between the current time and the requested trip end time. This allows the engine to detect situations where an aircraft may exceed a maintenance interval or where a pilot or aircraft requirement may expire during the mission window.
Q:Does the MVP support FAA rolling duty and rest calculations?
No. The MVP intentionally uses a lean duty model to avoid complex rolling 24-hour and multi-day rest computations. Instead, pilots are evaluated using configurable daily flight-hour limits and accumulated hours flown for the current operational day.
Q:What operational rules are included in the MVP?
The MVP focuses on high-value operational constraints including schedule overlap detection, aircraft seat-capacity validation, location and turnaround checks, hard compliance expiration logic, projected maintenance consumption and configurable pilot daily flight limits.
Q:Will the system explain why a resource is unavailable?
Yes. Every RISK or NO-GO result includes a structured operational explanation describing the failed condition. Examples include projected maintenance overrun, compliance expiration during the trip window, overlapping assignments or insufficient turnaround time between flights.
Q:How are aircraft and pilot hours updated?
When a flight is completed, the engine automatically applies the flight duration against all relevant hour-based tracking objects. Aircraft maintenance intervals decrement remaining hours while pilot daily flight totals increment against configured duty thresholds.
Q:Is operational data isolated between companies?
Yes. All authenticated database operations are protected using strict Row Level Security (RLS) policies scoped to organization ownership. Pilot records, aircraft data, compliance history and operational schedules remain logically isolated between operators.