Glossary

Field: aviation

Aircraft

Variations of an aircraft:

• Configuration
• Engines (ex: B763 comes either with RR, GE or PW engines)
• Cargo version

Aircraft Statuses:

• Departing / Arriving / At airport / Idle
• Parked / Stored
• Flying
• Sold / Transfered
• Destroyed

Other more gereral status:

• Active
• Stored

Properties

• Manufacturer Serial Number (MSN)
• Location: Home Airport and current location
• Livery
• History of flights

Aircraft changes

A modification to the registration is a synonym of a re-regitration of the aircraft. It has impact on its history.

A modification on aircraft load type (passengers vs cargo) is a synonym of a conversion. It has impact on its history. Might apply to layout changes.

Aircraft classes

Aircraft Category	Aircraft Class	Type
Airplanes	Single-Engine Land
	Single-Engine Sea
	Multi-Engine Land
	Multi-Engine Sea
Rotorcraft	Helocopters

There is more, but those are the supported classes for now.

OnAir Aircraft Classes

• SEPL: Single Engine Piston Land
• SETL: Single Engine TurboProp Land
• MEPL: Multi-engine Piston Land
• METL: Multi-engine TurboProp Land
• JET: Jet
• HEAVYJET: Heavy Jet
• HELO: Helicopter

Aircraft Approach Category

• Category A: Speed 90 knots or less. (E.g., Small Single-Engine)
• Category B: Between 91 and 120 knots. (E.g., Small Multi-Engine)
• Category C: Between 121 and 140 knots. (E.g., Airliner)
• Category D: Between 141 knots and 165 knots. (E.g., Large Airliner or Military Jet)
• Category E: Speed 166 knots or more. (E.g., Military Aircraft)

Company

By default, because almost everything is tied to a company, when a user is created, a company can also be created. For a user managing personal GA aircraft, company instance could be transparent.

Companies can be created as a child company. This let more flexibility, for example, to have a sub company managing an airline, another sub company managing a MRO, etc.

For simplicity, first iteration will consider only one company for a user.

Configuration

For this time, configurations are related to company, but also by aircraft type. Configurations varies for a same type, an example is a 737-800 with single class layout, or with two-class layout. Also, some company related configurations can be specified, another example is with a A320 setting the default CI to 20.

Fixed-Base Operators

FBO

Fleet

A fleet is a group of aircrafts. It is modeled as a self entity, but strictly speaking, a fleet is a group of aircrafts. Most of airlines have a single fleet, thus not having any value of describing a fleet by itself, but an airline may have different fleets for different kinds of needs. An example is the high-end fleet for business customers and a low-cost fleet for leisure customers. The structure can differ, it could surely be different companies having one fleet each. The model proposes that flexibility.

Flight

A flight can be considered as an event. Scheduled flight can be managed with certain recurrence or once. A flight usually have a flight number, for example Air France may have AFR358.

Flight Planning

Weather

Current use of METAR can be done via FlightPlanDatabase API (see flightplandb-api.http).

METARs are refreshed usually around 55 past the hour. Requests from FlightPlanDatabase API can be cached.

Flight Dispatch

A Flight Dispatch is the output of the planning of a flight. Usually it's the flight plan itself, but the current systems does not includes a flight planner (the tool required to find a proper route, fuel calculations, etc). Basically, a flight dispatch in our context, it's the gathering of information required to produce the flight plan out of the flight planner.

At the moment, required information for flight dispatch is:

• City pair
• Aircraft
• Pilot
• Scheduled times
• Payload
• Performance data

Flight Phases

• Taxi
• Run-up
• Takeoff
• Climb
• Cruise
• Descent
• Pre-Landing
• Landing
• Postflight
• Securing

Fuel

Types of fuel:

• JETA
• 100LL
• SAF
• MOGAS
• UL94

Source: globalair.com

Lessor

A lessor leases aircrafts to a lessee. Some guaranties comes with a lease: maintenance, support, training, etc.

Maintenance and Repair Organization (MRO)

An MRO is a company selling services, inspection, maintenance and repairs to airlines

Registration

Aircraft identification number.

Source of current registrations:

• https://www.avcodes.co.uk/regprefixcur.asp
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_registration_prefixes

Roles

Current supported roles are:

• Administrator: Manage application
• Owner: Manage Company, Airlines, etc
• Manager
• Dispatch: Creates routes and flights
• Pilot: Handles an aircraft

Route

Sequence of procedures, waypoints, airways to depart from an origin airport to a final airport.

A route is based on a specific AIRAC.

Predefined route

Suggested route between a city pair.

Procedure

Set of instructions to be memorized. Procedure can contain tasks, checklists and other forms of items.

Task

A task is a simple action to be done, example:

APU . . . . . Start

Checklist

A checklist is an official set of checkpoints to be executed to validate that procedure has been followed correctly.

An exemple is the Before Takeoff Checklist for an A320.

SOP

Standard Operating Procedures is a set of procedure determined by an airline that depends on security, environmental, and operations concerns.

Abreviations

ABR	Description
AIRAC	Aeronautical Information Regulation and Control
GA	General Aviation
GE	General Electric
MRO	Maintenance and Repair Organization
PW	Pratt & Whitney
RR	Rolls Royce

Universal Flight Tablet

An Universal Flight Tablet is homologous to an Electronic Flight Bag, but in a more modern way. It is basically a tablet (iPad) with context information available to flight crew.