AOC

Air Operator's Certificate

Also referred to as Operator or Operator Code

The AOC is the approval granted by a national aviation authority (NAA) to an aircraft operator to allow it to use aircraft for commercial purposes. This requires the operator to have personnel, assets and system in place to ensure the safety of its employees and the general public.

Base

The port to which crewmembers are expected to commence and finish their tasks / activities.

Block Hour

Also called block time, blocks or flight hours

The time from the moment the aircraft door closes at departure of a flight until the moment the aircraft door opens at the arrival gate following its landing. Block hours are the industry standard measure of aircraft utilization (see above). Many airlines consider a block hour to be from the time the chocks are removed from the wheels of a departing aircraft, after doors have been closed, until the time the chocks are put in place at the wheels after arrival at the airport gate before the doors are opened.

Broken Pairing

A pairing that has any of the following characteristics:

• does not return to its start location;

• has events that conflict with the previous or next event's port; or

• has overlapping events within it.

Note that there are other types of exceptions that indicate problem pairings, but these are broken in terms of structure rather than rule limits.

Company Pairing

Also called Generic Pairing, Ground Pairing, Non-flight Pairing, Standard Pairing

These are pre-defined non-flight pairings that can be allocated to crew. Examples of these are: Administration Days, Days Off, Annual Leave and Sick Leave. Also known as Standard Pairing or Generic Pairing.

Company Time

This refers to the time at which the pairing or event is occurring converted to the company’s base or headquarters location

Course Instance

An occurrence of a course scheduled for a specific day, which is allocated to crewmembers’ rosters.

Covered Pairing

A pairing that has all complements filled.

Covered Sector

A flight that has been assigned to a pairing.

Crew

A specific type of employee required for flight operations. This term is interchangeable with employee.

Crew Complement

The number and types of crew required for a pairing.

Crew Flow

The sequence of flights and events contained within a crew's duty. This may or may not be aligned to aircraft sequence.

Currency Requirements

Also called recency requirements

Pilots need to meet certain currency requirements in order to remain legal to operate. These can include instrument currency, night currency, various approach currencies, etc.

Delay

Deviation between the scheduled time of departure/arrival and the actual time of departure/arrival

Department

The areas within an airline or company that are tasked with providing particular services of a similar type. For example, in an airline there are Flight Operations (i.e. the manning and operating of aircraft), Maintenance (ensure the aircraft were able to operate safely), and Ramp (the parking and coordination of aircraft resupply between flights).

Departure Time

The time the aircraft departs from the specified port. There are three sets of arrival times used in the system:

• Scheduled time of departure (STD) - the original departure time

• Estimated time of departure (ETD) - the expected time of departure. This can change depending on the performance of the previous flights.

• Actual time of departure (ATD) - the exact time the aircraft stops

Disruptions

Operational events that occur on or around the day of operation that result in the need to modify pairings that could lead to breaching compliance rules. Disruptions can be manifested as a flight delay, diversion, return or cancellation. Some causes of disruption are air traffic, weather and technical problems.

Duty

A grouping of flights and / or activities that can be performed legally by a crew member during one work period.  One or more duties combined together define a pairing.

Duty Change

An update to a published pairing where the history of changes for a duty are recorded.

Duty Change Notification

Whenever an assigned published pairing or duty is modified, the assigned crew need to be notified of the change to ensure they made aware of the latest version of the pairing. This is referred to as a duty change notification and is sent to crew via CrewPortal and CrewMobile.

Employee

The generic term for people who are trained to perform specific tasks/activities. Within Flight Operations, the employees are generally referred to as crew or crewmembers; and within Maintenance, the employees are generally referred to as engineers, mechanics, avionic technicians etc.

Equip Config

Each equipment type can have more than one configuration for seats and cargo. This will affect the assignment of flights to aircraft rego/tails.

Equipment Group

The grouping of a similar set of equipment types. For example, a 737 which could be comprised of 733 and 734 equipment types.

This can also be used as a reference to indicate the equipment types that a crewmember is legal to operate on as part of his rating.

Equipment Type

Also called aircraft type.

Model of the aircraft. A specific type of aircraft that has distinct characteristics, for example a 733 or 734.

This can also be used as a reference to indicate the equipment types that a crewmember is legal to operate on as part of his rating.

Flight

Also called sector

The transport taken from a departure point to an arrival point.

Flight Complement

The number and types of crew required to operate a flight.

Flight Pairing

A pairing that contains at least one operating flight.

Gantt

A Gantt chart, commonly used in project management shows you what has to be done in terms of activities, tasks and events and when in terms of scheduled dates and time.

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time

Also called Zulu time

The time at location at which the pairing or event is occurring converted to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) value.

Ground Pairing

A pairing that contains only ground activities. No operating or deadheading flights are included.

Local Time

The time at the location at which the pairing or event is occurring. If the location is the same or in the same time zone as the company base or headquarters location this time will be the same as the company value.

Open Pairing

A pairing that has at least one complement still requiring a crew member to be assigned.

Open Sector

Also called unpaired flight

A flight that has not been assigned to a pairing.

Open Time Drop

A type of trade where a crewmember is able to "drop" a pairing from his roster into a list of open pairings and replace that pairing with a day off

Open Time Pickup

An under-complemented pairing that a crew member is able to "pick up" (exchange for a day off or reserve) or swap with (exchange for another operating pairing)

Paired Flight

A flight that has been added or assigned to a pairing.

Pairing

The generic unit of work and non-work that can be assigned to a crew member. A pairing is comprised of none, one or more flights and/or activities grouped together into one or more duties. A pairing may span over multiple days. One or more duties combined together define a pairing.

A pairing is from home base to home base so it can encompass a number of duties each with individual report and release times. In this way pairings can span a single or multiple days. Pairings are usually built for all crew that carry out identical work. For instance the Captain, the First Officer and the Flight Attendants, who all stay together, will be on the same pairing. To ensure consistency and simplicity of allocation a Pairing will be the only unit of activity that can be assigned to a crew member. There are some exceptions to this but in general this concept applies across the suite of applications.

Pairing Complement

The required number of employees of each rank that are needed to fully operate that pairing.

Port

An airport or station

Port Currency

Also called port recency

Some ports are categorized to have a more difficult method of landing and takeoff. For these ports, pilots are required to operate to and from the port more frequently, thus they need to be current for the port. In some cases, they need to land and takeoff once every 90 days.

Problem

Non-rule based exceptions generated by the Problem Detection Engine (PDE), such as incorrect report/release times, illogical flight/pairing data, and crew complement issues.

Puck

The graphical representation of a flight or pairing in a Gantt chart.

Rank

The core qualification that an employee holds which defines the level/type of tasks and activities they can perform. For example Captain, First Officer, Flight Attendant.

Rating (or Type Rating)

Defines the combination of equipment and position that personnel can legally operate. In merlot, the characteristics that define a rating are: Rank, and Equipment Group.

RDO

Rostered Day Off

A day in a roster period that an employee doesn't have to work. An employee's day off can be paid or unpaid, depending on how RDOs are set out in an award or registered agreement.

Roster

A roster is simply a defined period of time within which the crew member’s work and non-work assignments are defined.

Roster Period

The date range in which a set of work and other activities is to be performed

Route

A course between two ports, for example BNE-SYD

Route Currency

Also called route recency

Some routes are categorized to have a more difficult operation. For these ports, pilots are required to operate the route more frequently, thus they need to be current for the port. In some cases, they need to operate the route once every 90 days.

System

The merlot.aero software application.

User

A person who has access to view and/or modify data in the system

Violation

Any breach of a configured rule that has been generated by the merlot RulesEngine. Rules are generally configured to enforce published regulatory requirements from government agencies and other company rules as defined in the airline's operations manual.

Violation Behavior

This determines what can be done to a violation once it is flagged. This works in conjunction with violation severity.

• Inviolate - does not allow the assignment to push through no matter what

• Override - if the user has the appropriate security rights, he can override the violation

• Override Disrupt - if the user has the appropriate security rights, he can override the violation only if the flight is in disrupt

• Track - the user can proceed with the roster changes but the violation is retained for tracking purposes. The violation will not have a pop up, but will be visible in the Violation Panel.

• Ignore - the violations are retained in the Violation Panel

Violation Override

This determines how a violation should be overridden

• Management - the credentials of a management-level user must supply his credentials when overriding the violation

• Supervisor - a supervisor must supply his credentials when overriding the violation

• Extension - a user with override rights must supply his credentials when overriding the violation which consequentially allows an extension to the flight hours, duty hours and/or flight duty period

• Discretion - signifies that the violation will be overridden based on the captain's discretion

Violation Severity

This determines how a violation is presented

• Critical - the violation must be addressed. Otherwise, the crew is illegal to fly

• Ignorable - the violation can be addressed later and will not prevent the crew from reporting for a duty

• Informational - the rule breach is for informational purposes only

• Passed - the rule is not breached and nothing has to be done