ACARS

Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System

A digital datalink system for transmission of short messages between aircraft and ground stations via airband radio or satellite.

JobEngine

ACMI

Aircraft, Complete Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance (Wet Lease) 

A wet lease is a leasing arrangement whereby one airline (the lessor) provides an aircraft, complete crew, maintenance, and insurance (ACMI) to another airline or other type of business acting as a broker of air travel (the lessee), which pays by hours operated.

Business term

Air Return

An event where the aircraft takes off from an port and makes an unscheduled return to the same port

AircraftFollow

Aircraft Utilization

Measure of aircraft productivity calculated by dividing aircraft block hours by the number of aircraft days assigned to service on air carrier routes. Typically presented in block hours per day.

Business term

Reports

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.

Ratings

Filters across the system

APIS

Advance Passenger Information System

An electronic data interchange system established by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). APIS governs the provision of a limited number of data elements (identification details from the passport and basic flight information) from commercial airline and vessel operators to the computer system of the destination state. Required information should conform to specifications for UN/EDIFACT Passenger List Message (PAXLST) formats.

JobEngine

Arrival Time

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

• Scheduled time of arrival (STA) - the original arrival time

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

• Actual time of arrival (ATA) - the exact time the aircraft stops

AircraftFollow

ATC

Air Traffic Control

A service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airspace. The primary purpose of ATC worldwide is to prevent collisions, organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and provide information and other support for pilots.

Business term

Available Seat Miles (ASMs) or

Available Seat Kilometers (ASKs)

A common industry measurement of airline output that refers to one aircraft seat flown one mile/kilometer, whether occupied or not. An aircraft with 100 passenger seats, flown a distance of 100 miles, generates 10,000 available seat miles.

Business term

Reports

ASM

Ad hoc Schedule Message

A message containing flight schedule information. This can be imported and exported by the JobEngine.

JobEngine.

BACPAC

A BACPAC is an artifact that encapsulates the database schema as well as the data stored in the database. The BACPAC is a Windows file with a .bacpac extension. Similar to the DACPAC, the BACPAC file format is open – the schema contents of the BACPAC are identical to that of the DACPAC. The data is stored in JSON format. A BACPAC, on the other hand, is focused on capturing schema and data. A BACPAC is the logical equivalent of a database backup and cannot be used to upgrade existing databases. The primary use case for a BACPAC is to move a database from one server to another - or from a local server to the cloud - and archiving an existing database in an open format.

Database

Base

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

System-wide

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.

System-wide

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.

Crew Applications

Cargo

Goods carried by the airline not associated to a passenger.

AircraftFollow

CASM

Cost per Available Seat Mile

Measure of unit cost in the airline industry. CASM is calculated by taking all of an airline’s operating expenses and dividing it by the total number of available seat miles produced.

Business term

Certification

A type of qualification that the crew must renew on his own time. These do not need to be scheduled by the airline, but they are needed to keep the crew legal to fly. Examples of which are passports and pilot licenses.

CrewPlan

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.

Crew Applications

Company Time

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

System-wide

Course Association

A direct link between a crewmember and a qualification that he or she needs to attend and pass in order to operate on a flight.

CrewPlan

Course Instance

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

CrewPlan

Covered Pairing

A pairing that has all complements filled.

Crew Applications

Covered Sector

A flight that has been assigned to a pairing.

Crew Applications

Crew

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

System-wide

Crew Complement

The number and types of crew required for a pairing.

System-wide

Crew Flow

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

Crew Applications

CRMS

Crew Resource Management System

Crew Resource Management is the effective use of all available resources for flight crew personnel to assure a safe and efficient operation, reducing error, avoiding stress and increasing efficiency.

Business term

CRP

Conference Room Pilot

A term used in software procurement and software acceptance testing. A CRP may be used during the selection and implementation of a software application in an organisation or company.

Business term

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.

System-wide

DAC

Data-tier application

A data-tier application defines the database schema and associated database objects that are required to support an application. When you create a SQL Server Database Project, you have the beginning of the DAC for your application.

By the time you are ready to deploy the application, all of the database schema, data, and other scripts that are needed to support the application should be in the Database Project. Then the Database Project is the DAC.

Database

DACPAC

Data-tier Application Package

When you compile (build) a Database Project, the Data-tier application (Database Project) is packaged into a DAC package or DACPAC that is stored in the bin\Debug or bin\Release folder.The DACPAC is basically a zip file that contains the database schema, any data or refactoring scripts, metadata, and anything else that SSDT would need to understand the desired end shape of the database.

Database

Day of Operation

The day of the schedule that is today.

Business term

DCS

Departure Control System

Automates processing an airline's airport management operation. This includes managing the information required for Airport Check-in and printing Boarding card, baggage acceptance, boarding, load control and aircraft checks.

Business term

Delay

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

AircraftFollow Introduction

Delta

Delta is the difference in the report and release times between roles, an instructor, crew, pilot, or a student.

System-wide

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).

System-wide

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

AircraftFollow Introduction

Dependability

This is the measure of an airline’s on-time performance. It includes the following measures:

• D + five (D+5): departures that push back from the gate within five minutes of the scheduled time.

• D + zero (D+0): departures that push back from the gate on time.

• A + 15: arrivals within 15 minutes of the published arrival time.

ExecutiveDashboard

Designator

Unique alphanumeric code given to distinguish each airline, or operations within an airline

AircraftSchedule_

AircraftFollow Introduction

Direct Swap

A direct approach made by one crew member to another offering their own pairing(s) in exchange for the other crew's.

CrewPortal

Dispatcher

The dispatcher is the person responsible for producing a flight plan with the best routing. They monitor the weather situation and are there to report non-forecast conditions to the flight crew via a radio uplink. The dispatcher has access to on-staff meteorologists, mechanics, air traffic control centers and operations centers around the world.

Business term

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.

CrewRoster

CrewFollow

CrewMonitor

Divert

When an aircraft changes its arrival port while in flight, usually due to weather or engineering issues

AircraftFollow

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.

Crew Applications

Duty Change

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

CrewFollow

CrewMonitor

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.

CrewFollow

CrewMonitor

EFB

Electronic Flight Bag

An electronic information management device that helps flight crews perform flight management tasks more easily and efficiently with less paper.

Business term

ERP

Enterprise resource planning

Business management software—typically a suite of integrated applications—that a company can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities, including: Product planning, cost; Manufacturing or service delivery; Marketing and sales; Inventory.

Business term

ESB

Enterprise Service Bus

A software architecture model used for designing and implementing communication between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Business term

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.

System-wide

Equalisation

The concept that over a particular period of time, each crewmember will have similar types of assignments during the period as the other crew members within their rank / group.

CrewRoster

Optimiser

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.

What are merlot’s applications?

AircraftFollow Introduction

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.

System-wide

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.

System-wide

ETOPS

Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards

Applies to twins on routes with diversion time more than 60 minutes at one engine inoperative speed.

Business term

Expiry

An expiration date of a qualification

CrewPlan

FIDS

Flight Information Display System

Real-time flight arrival and departure data for an airport, either as a board inside or near the airport terminal or a virtual version on a website or teletext.

Business term

Flight

Also called sector

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

System-wide

Flight Complement

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

System-wide

Flight Display Panels

Displays real-time flight information for flights. It enables airline operations personnel to monitor flight operations in real-time and to respond quickly to operational irregularities by making necessary adjustments to aircraft and crew. 

AircraftFollow

Flight Information Window (FIW)

A popup form giving users access to all information related to a specific flight. Users can also edit select flight information via this form.

AircraftFollow

Flight instance

A specific flight on a specific date. This term is used for flights that are recurred through a specified period.

AircraftSchedule_

Flight Log

Also called Voyage Report

Flight logs are the official records of a particular flight. Details on flight times, crew times and fuel logs are included.

AircraftFollow

Flight Pairing

A pairing that contains at least one operating flight.

Crew Applications

Flight sequence

A series of flights in a chronological flow for one equipment type or an aircraft/tail

AircraftSchedule_

AircraftFollow Introduction

Flight Status

Current state of the flight. Typically categorized as boarding, departed, on time, arrived, delayed, diverted, etc.

AircraftFollow Introduction

FMS

Flight Management System

A fundamental component of a modern airliner's avionics. An FMS is a specialized computer system that automates a wide variety of in-flight tasks, reducing the workload on the flight crew to the point that modern civilian aircraft no longer carry flight engineers or navigators.

Business term

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. 

Crew and Aircraft Applications

Gate

The location at the airport where passengers embark and disembark.

AircraftFollow Introduction

GDS

Global Distribution System

A network operated by a company that enables automated transactions between third parties and booking agents in order to provide travel-related services to the end consumers. A GDS can link services, rates and bookings consolidating products and services across all three travel sectors: i.e., airline reservations, hotel reservations, car rentals, and activities.

Business term

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.

System-wide

Ground Pairing

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

Crew Applications

Ground Return

An event when an aircraft has left the gate and returns to the gate without taking off

AircraftFollow

IATA

International Air Transport Association 

A trade association of the world’s airlines. These 250 airlines, primarily major carriers, carry approximately 84% of total Available Seat Kilometers air traffic. IATA supports airline activity and helps formulate industry policy and standards. It is headquartered in Montreal, Canada with Executive Offices in Geneva, Switzerland.

Business term

ICAO

International Civil Aviation Organization

A specialized agency of the United Nations. It codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth.Its headquarters are located in the Quartier International of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended practices concerning air navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation.

Business term

ILS

Instrument Landing System

Consists of the localizer, the glideslope and marker radio beacons (Outer, Middle, Inner). It provides horizontal and vertical guidance for the approach.

AircraftFollow

Irregular operations

Also called IROP

Any deviation from the original aircraft schedule is considered to be an irregular operation such as delays, diversions, air returns, ground returns, cancellations or deletions.

AircraftFollow Introduction

Join

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to join a flight to another cycle.

AircraftFollow

Join Onward Flights

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to join a flight, including all the following flights.

AircraftFollow

Load Factor

The number of Revenue Passenger Miles (RPMs) expressed as a percentage of ASMs, either on a particular flight or for the entire system. Load factor represents the proportion of airline output that is actually consumed. To calculate this figure, divide RPMs by ASMs. Load factor for a single flight can also be calculated by dividing the number of passengers by the number of seats.

Business term

Local machine

The computer the user is working on.

Business term

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.

System-wide

LOB

Line of Business application

An LOB (line-of-business) application is one of the set of critical computer applications that are vital to running an enterprise, such as accounting, supply chain management, and resource planning applications.

Business term

LOI

Letter of Intent

A document outlining the general plans of an agreement between two or more parties before a legal agreement is finalized. A letter of intent is not a contract and cannot be legally enforced; however, it signifies a serious commitment from one involved party to another.

Business term

LROPS

Long Range Operational Performance Standards.

Certification intended to replace ETOPS as it would include all types of aircraft (not just twin-engine).

Business term

Maintenance

Also called maintenance event

A servicing event on an aircraft that is scheduled in advance. These events typically are scheduled for minutes, hours, days or weeks in duration.

AircraftFollow

Maintenance Coordinator

The maintenance coordinator understands all of the aircraft systems and has access to all of the maintenance manuals to find a solution to a problem of a technical nature with an aircraft.

Business term

Mark as Active

Also called Activate Schedule

Defines the schedule as able to be used within the rest of the merlot application suite. Similar to publishing a schedule in order to be used across the system.

AircraftSchedule_

MEL

Minimum Equipment List

A record of registered maintenance issues for an aircraft. The list determines if the aircraft is airworthy or not.

AircraftFollow

Move

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to move a flight from one cycle to another.

AircraftFollow

MQ

IBM MQ (Message Queue)

MQ facilitates the assured, secure and reliable exchange of information between applications, systems, services and file by sending and receiving message data via messaging queues, thereby simplifying the creation and maintenance of business applications.

Business term

MRO

Maintenance, Repair, & Operation System

MRO software is used by aviation companies to help control their technical records of aircraft fleets and the maintenance requirements of such fleets. Some products also allow third party providers of maintenance and continuous airworthiness services to use these products without the need for complex infrastructure. MRO software helps track the logistics, inventory, spare parts and work orders related to maintenance activities.

Business term

MVC

Model View Controller

The ASP.NET MVC is an open source web application framework that implements the model–view–controller (MVC) pattern.

Business term

MVT

Movement Message

A message file containing changes or updates to flight times.

JobEngine

Non-contiguous

A description for two events that do not flow together. For example, event 1 is set for port ABC and event 2 is set for port DEF but there is no way to transport the employee between the two ports. Another example is when a flight takes employees from ABC to DEF but the next flight in their pairing is from GHI to DEF.

System-wide

NOTAM

Notices To Airmen

Issued by the country’s aviation authority to inform pilots of new or changed aeronautical facilities, services, procedures, or hazards, temporary or permanent.

Business term

OTP

On Time Performance

A measure of how well the airline is performing in terms of following the schedule of flights

AircraftFollow Introduction

ExecutiveDashboard

Onward flight

A field where users can link one flight to another to form a chronological sequence of flights. The onward flight may occur on the following day, but never before the flight’s date.

AircraftFollow Introduction

Open Pairing

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

Crew Applications

Open Sector

Also called unpaired flight

A flight that has not been assigned to a pairing.

Crew Applications

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

CrewPortal

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)

CrewPortal

Operating Revenue

Revenues received from total airline operations including scheduled and non-scheduled service. Sources of revenue include passengers, cargo, excess baggage and certain other transport-related revenue

Business term

ORM

Object Relational Mapping

Object-relational mapping (ORM, O/RM, and O/R mapping) is a programming technique for converting data between incompatible type systems in object-oriented programming languages. This creates, in effect, a "virtual object database" that can be used from within the programming language.

Business term

Paired Flight

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

Crew Applications

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. 

Crew Applications

Pairing Complement

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

Crew Applications

Passenger

Also called pax

A customer of the airline assigned a seat on the aircraft.  Infants may not be assigned a seat.

Business term

Passenger Revenue

Revenue received by the airline from the carriage of passengers in scheduled operations.

Business term

Passenger Yield

Measure of average fare paid per mile, per passenger calculated by dividing passenger revenue by revenue passenger miles. Typically the measure is presented in cents per mile and is a useful measure in assessing changes in fares over time. Yield is not useful for comparisons across markets and/or airlines, as it varies dramatically by stage length and does not incorporate load factor (unlike PRASM).

Business term

PNR

Passenger Name Record 

A record in the database of a computer reservation system that contains the itinerary for a passenger, or a group of passengers travelling together.

Business term

Pooled messages

A collection of messages awaiting to be sent.

System-wide

Pop Up Menu

An intuitive menu that enables users to conveniently move, join, swap and drop flights in the Allocation Gantt by dragging a flight puck and holding the mouse on left-click.

AircraftFollow

Port

An airport or station

System-wide

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.

System-wide

Posted Swap

A new swap that has been posted by either a crew member or the system for other crew to submit offers.

PRASM

Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile

Often referred to as a measure of passenger unit revenue. It is calculated by dividing passenger revenue by available seat miles. Typically the measure is presented in terms of cents per mile. This measure is equivalent to the product of load factor and yield.

Business term

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.

Crew Applications

Puck

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

Aircraft and Crew Applications

Qualification

A skill or experience that is required for crew to legally operate on a flight

CrewPlan

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. 

System-wide

RASM

Revenue per Available Seat Mile

Also called unit revenue

This figure is calculated by dividing the airline’s total revenue by all of the available seat miles.

Business term

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.

System-wide

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. 

Crew Applications

Recurrent flight

A flight that operates the same flight number, route and timings on more than one day

AircraftSchedule_

Recurrent Training

Training requirement that needs to be retaken frequently and is necessary for a crew member to remain legal to operate a flight

CrewPlan

Rego

Also called Registration or Tail Number

Rego is the term for registration in Australia and New Zealand. Registration is the unique alphanumeric code given to differentiate each individual aircraft from all others worldwide.

AircraftFollow

REST

REpresentational State Transfer

REST is an architectural style, and an approach to communications that is often used in the development of Web services. REST has gained widespread acceptance across the World Wide Web as a simpler alternative to SOAP and WSDL-based web services. REST does not leverage as much bandwidth, which makes it a better fit for use over the Internet.

Business term

Replace

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to replace a flight with a target flight and drops the target flight into a new cycle.

AircraftFollow

Replace Onward Flights

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to replace a flight with a target flight and drops the target flight into a new cycle, including all the following flights on both cycles.

AircraftFollow

Revenue per Employee

One measure to determine an airline’s labor productivity. It is calculated by dividing an airline’s total revenue by the number of airline employee full-time equivalents as reported to the US Department of Transportation.

Business term

RFI

Request For Information

A standard business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.

Business term

RFP

Request For Proposal

A solicitation, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service or valuable asset, to potential suppliers to submit business proposals.

Business term

RPM

Revenue Passenger Miles

This is the basic measure of airline passenger traffic. It reflects how many of an airline's available seats were actually sold. For example if 200 passengers fly 500 miles on a flight it generates 100,000 RPMs.

Business term

Roster

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

Crew Applications

Roster Period

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

What are merlot’s applications?

Route

A course between two ports, for example BNE-SYD

System-wide

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-wide

SaaS

Software as a Service

Software as a service is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. It is sometimes referred to as "on-demand software". SaaS is typically accessed by users using a thin client via a web browser.

Business term

Schedule

A timetable of flights 

AircraftSchedule_

AircraftFollow Introduction

SDLC

Software Development Life Cycle

A software development lifecycle is essentially a series of steps, or phases, that provide a model for the development and lifecycle management of an application or piece of software.

Business term

Seat Density

Average seating configuration of an airline’s operating fleet. The measure is derived by dividing total available seat miles flown by the number of aircraft miles flown. It is important to understand the average aircraft size as it is an important determinant of employees needed to service the operation of a particular airline.

Business term

SI

Systems Integrator

A systems integrator is a person or company that specializes in bringing together component subsystems into a whole and ensuring that those subsystems function together, a practice known as systemintegration. 

Business term

Silverlight

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering media and rich interactive applications for the Web. The Silverlight browser plug-in is freely available for all major browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Apple'a Safari and Windows Internet Explorer running on the Macintosh or Microsoft Windows.

Business term

SLA

Service Level Agreement

A part of a service contract [where a service is formally defined. Particular aspects of the service - scope, quality, responsibilities - are agreed between the service provider and the service user.

Business term

SLA PRESM

Stage Length Adjusted Passenger Revenue per Equivalent Seat Mile

 A common practice utilized to normalize comparisons of PRASM between carriers. Comparisons between carriers are significantly impacted by the distance flown and this analytical approach is designed to compare results as if all carriers fly the same missions.

Business term

SLA TRESM

Stage Length Adjusted Total Revenue per Equivalent Seat Mile

 A common practice utilized to normalize comparisons of TRASM between carriers. Comparisons between carriers are significantly impacted by the distance flown and this analytical approach is designed to compare results as if all carriers fly the same missions.

Business term

Slot

A scheduled time when an aircraft can take off and land at a busy airport.

Business term

SOA

Service Orientated Architecture

A service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural pattern in computer software design in which application components provide services to other components via a communications protocol, typically over a network. The principles of service-orientation are independent of any vendor, product or technology.

Business term

SOAP

Simple Object Access protocol

SOAP is a protocol specification for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services in computer networks. It uses XML Information Set for its message format, and relies on other application layer protocols, most notably Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), for message negotiation and transmission.

Business term

Split Cycles

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to split a cycle into two, starting from the selected flight.

AircraftFollow

SSIM

Standard Schedule Information Manual

A message file that contains a flight schedule for several months. This is commonly used to send a seasonal schedule from one system to another.

AircraftSchedule_

Stage-Length

The average distance flown, measure in statute miles, per aircraft departure. The measure is calculated by dividing total aircraft miles flown by the number of total aircraft departures performed.

Business term

Stage Length Adjusted Passenger Yield (Passenger Revenue Per Revenue Passenger Mile)

A common practice utilized to normalize comparisons of Passenger Yield between carriers. Comparisons between carriers are significantly impacted by the distance flown and this analytical approach is designed to compare results as if all carriers fly the same missions.

Business term

Swap

A voluntary exchange of pairings between one crew and another or between one crew and the "system" (open time pickup and open time drops). Also referred to as a "trade" within the industry.

Note: For some customers a Trade is considered an exchange between 2 crew only and a "Swap" is considered an exchange with the "system". I.e." Open Time". In Merlot both types of exchanges are referred to as a "Swap" and are both processed. by the Crew "Swap" job.

CrewPortal

Swap - Pop Up Menu

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to swap a flight with a target flight.

AircraftFollow

Swap Board

An exchange board on which crew can advertise their own swaps to other crew and on which other crew can submit offers or claim open time pickup / drop pairings. Also referred to as a "trade board" in the industry.

CrewPortal

Swap Offer

An offer submitted by a crew member on an existing advertised swap.

CrewPortal

Swap Onward Flights

A button in the Pop Up Menu used to swap a flight with a target flight, including all the following flights on both cycles.

AircraftFollow

System

The merlot.aero software application.

System-wide

Terminal

The airport building in which the aircraft will arrive at or depart from.

AircraftFollow

TRASM

Total Revenue per Available Seat Mile

Often referred to as a measure of unit revenue. It is calculated by dividing total operating revenue by available seat miles. Typically the measure is presented in terms of cents per mile.

Business term

Turnaround

Also called Actual Turnaround, Scheduled Turnaround, Turnaround Time

Amount of time between the arrival of a flight and its departure from a port. This is also the time taken to unload passengers, baggage, cargo, etc. upon arrival and to board passengers and load baggage, cargo, etc. before departure

AircraftFollow Introduction

User

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

System-wide

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.

Crew Applications

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

System-wide

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

System-wide

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

System-wide

Waypoint

Reference point used for navigation, usually indicated by latitude and longitude and sometimes altitude and typically used for GPS and INS navigation.

Business term

WCF

Windows Communication Foundation

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework for building service-oriented applications. Using WCF, you can send data as asynchronous messages from one service endpoint to another. A service endpoint can be part of a continuously available service hosted by IIS, or it can be a service hosted in an application.

Business term

Web Stack

A collection of software required for Web development. At a minimum, a Web stack contains an operating system (OS), a programming language, database software and a Web server.

Example web stacks:

• LAMP: Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP

• WISA: Windows Server/IIS/MSSQL/ASP.NET ß Merlot

• Front End Web stack: HTML/CSS/JavaScript ß Current Merlot Portals

Business term

WPF

Windows Presentation Foundation

A raphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications by Microsoft. WPF, previously known as "Avalon", was initially released as part of .NET Framework 3.0. Rather than relying on the older GDI subsystem, WPF uses DirectX. WPF attempts to provide a consistent programming model for building applications and separates the user interface from business logic. It resembles similar XML-oriented object models, such as those implemented in XUL and SVG.

WPF employs XAML, an XML-based language, to define and link various interface elements. WPF applications can also be deployed as standalone desktop programs, or hosted as an embedded object in a website.

Business term

WSDL

Web Services Description Language

WSDL is an XML-based interface definition language that is used for describing the functionality offered by a web service. The acronym is also used for any specific WSDL description of a web service (also referred to as a WSDL file), which provides a machine-readable description of how the service can be called, what parameters it expects, and what data structures it returns.

Business term

XAML

Extensible Application Markup language

(eXtensible Application Markup Language) An XML-based set of tags used to describe objects and events when programming .NET-based Windows applications. Pronounced "zammel," XAML was introduced with .NET Framework 3.0. XAML is used to define elements in the user interface (Windows Presentation Foundation) and in workflow structures (Windows Workflow Foundation).

Business term

XAP

Silverlight Application Package 

XAP is the file format used to distribute and install application software and middleware onto Microsoft's Windows Phone 7/8 operating system, and is the file format for Silverlight applications.

Business term