Modules Overview

PlaneConnection is organized into four core modules: Safety, Operations, Maintenance, and FBO — with AI assistance available across the platform. Together, they cover the full scope of flight department management — from regulatory compliance and risk management to trip planning, crew scheduling, aircraft maintenance, FBO services, fuel operations, adaptive training, and financial operations. This page explains how the modules are organized, why they are structured the way they are, and how they connect to each other and to the regulatory framework.

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Integrated Platform

All modules share a common workspace, user directory, and data layer. This integration means that a safety report referencing a specific flight can link to operational data, crew training records reflect the same personnel tracked in operations, and aircraft discrepancies flow naturally from ops into the safety risk pipeline. You can switch between modules at any time using the module switcher in the sidebar. Workspace administrators can enable or disable individual modules under Settings > Workspace > Modules. Disabling a module hides it from the sidebar, removes module-specific roles from the assignment dropdown, and prevents access to its routes — but does not delete any data. Re-enabling a module restores access to all existing records. See Module Enable/Disable below for details. A command palette (Cmd+K on Mac, Ctrl+K on Windows) provides instant access to any feature across all modules — search for a page, jump to a record, or switch context without navigating through menus. An AI copilot sidebar is available throughout the platform, providing context-aware assistance based on the page you are viewing. The copilot can help with risk assessments, draft content, answer questions about your data, and provide operational suggestions.

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Safety Module

The Safety module implements the four pillars of SMS required by FAA 14 CFR Part 5. It is designed for safety managers, accountable executives, investigators, and all personnel who participate in the safety reporting and risk management process.

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Overview

• Dashboard — A real-time summary of your SMS health: open reports, pending investigations, overdue CPAs, compliance status, and safety performance trends. This is the primary landing page for safety managers who need an at-a-glance assessment.
• Analytics — Deeper data analysis with charts and visualizations covering report volumes, risk distributions, response times, trend lines, and category breakdowns.

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Report and Investigate

• Safety Reports — Submit, review, and manage safety reports. Supports confidential and anonymous submissions, categorization by event type, natural language reporting, and structured lifecycle tracking from submission through closure. Reporters can track their anonymous submissions via tracking codes.
• Investigations — Formal investigation workflows triggered by safety reports. Includes root cause analysis (RCA) tools, findings documentation, timeline reconstruction, evidence attachments, and linkage to corrective actions.
• Corrective Actions (CPAs) — Track corrective and preventive actions from assignment through completion and effectiveness verification. Includes owner assignment, due dates, evidence attachments, overdue tracking, and verification workflows.

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Risk and Compliance

• Risk Register — The organization’s active risk inventory. Each entry captures a hazard, its risk assessment (severity and likelihood on the 5x5 matrix), associated controls, initial risk, and residual risk. The interactive risk matrix provides a visual overview of your risk landscape.
• Compliance — Map your SMS against Part 5 requirements element by element. Track evidence, identify gaps, generate compliance reports, and export evidence packages for internal audits or FAA inspections. Includes the Part 5 report, gap analysis, DOC progress tracking, and the Implementation and Evaluation Plan (IEP).
• Management of Change (MOC) — Formal change management process ensuring that operational changes are assessed for safety risk before implementation.
• Just Culture — Decision-support tools for classifying reported events into human error, at-risk behavior, or reckless conduct categories, ensuring consistent and fair treatment.

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Knowledge

• Training — Manage SMS training programs with course libraries, assignment tracking, completion monitoring, compliance reporting, and training records that satisfy Part 5 Section 5.91 requirements. Includes an adaptive training engine that adjusts content difficulty based on individual performance (see the Training Module section below for details).
• Documents — Version-controlled repository for safety policies, procedures, manuals, bulletins, and reference materials. Supports upload, categorization, and access control.
• Safety Committee — Schedule meetings, record minutes, track action items, and manage committee membership. Maintains the documented record of safety governance activities that demonstrates active safety leadership.
• Emergency Response (ERP) — Emergency response plan documentation, contact lists, exercise scheduling, and drill records.
• Glossary — Shared safety terminology reference accessible to all workspace members.

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Proactive Safety

• ASAP (Aviation Safety Action Program) — Manage your ASAP program with structured event reporting, review workflows, and corrective action tracking. Create ASAP reports, assign reviewers, and track resolution through the program lifecycle. Integrates with the broader SMS reporting pipeline.
• Anomaly Detection — Automated monitoring that flags unusual patterns in operational and safety data. Leverages FOQA bridge data and flight parameters to identify deviations and surface them for safety review before they become incidents.
• Safety Bulletins — Publish and distribute safety bulletins to your workforce. Create bulletins for emerging hazards, seasonal risks, or lessons learned from investigations. Track acknowledgment and readership across the organization.
• Safety Culture Score — Quantitative measurement of your organization’s safety culture health. Aggregates reporting frequency, response times, training participation, just culture adherence, and leadership engagement into a composite score with trend tracking over time.
• Activity Log — Chronological audit trail of all safety-related actions across the workspace. Review who submitted reports, updated investigations, completed CPAs, or modified risk assessments. Supports filtering by date range, user, and action type.

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Analytics and AI

• Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) — Define and monitor SPIs with targets, thresholds, alert levels, and trend visualization. Track both leading and lagging indicators over time.
• SmartScore — AI-powered safety scoring that aggregates multiple data sources — report trends, CPA timeliness, training compliance, risk register health — into an overall safety assessment. Includes pilot-level scoring and historical tracking.
• Safety AI Assistant (ALI) — A conversational AI that can answer questions about your SMS data, draft reports, summarize investigation findings, translate safety documents, and provide regulatory guidance. Operates within your workspace’s data boundary.
• AI-Guided Onboarding — A conversational onboarding experience where ALI walks new workspace administrators through five phases: operation profile, safety team identification, compliance document generation, SPI configuration, and a platform tour. See the AI-Guided Onboarding tutorial.
• AI-Powered Reports — Automated analysis of safety report patterns, trend identification, and anomaly detection.
• AI Insights — Proactive notifications surfaced by AI analysis of your safety data.

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Operations Module

The Operations module manages the day-to-day business of running a flight department. It covers trip management, fleet tracking, crew scheduling, passenger records, owner management, and financial operations.

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Overview

• Dashboard — Operational command center showing upcoming trips, aircraft status, crew availability, weather conditions, and key business metrics. The primary landing page for operations managers and dispatchers.
• Dispatch Board — Consolidated view of active flights, aircraft positions, crew assignments, and trip statuses. Includes aircraft availability and scheduling views.

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Flights

• Trips — Create, schedule, and manage flight trips from request through completion. Each trip includes legs, crew assignments, passenger manifests, weight and balance, catering, ground transportation, and associated documentation.
• Schedule — Calendar view of all scheduled flights, crew assignments, and aircraft availability. Supports drag-and-drop scheduling and conflict detection.
• Flight Logs — Record actual flight data: block times, flight times, fuel burn, landings, approaches, and crew duty periods. Flight log data feeds into aircraft utilization tracking and crew currency records.
• Logbooks — Pilot logbook entries generated from flight logs, maintaining personal flight time records.

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Fleet

• Aircraft — Fleet management with aircraft profiles, registration details, specifications, configuration, and current status tracking. Includes full aircraft reports with utilization history.
• Due Items — Track maintenance items, inspections, ADs, and compliance deadlines by aircraft. Monitors both time-based (calendar) and cycle-based (hours, landings) due dates with configurable warning thresholds.
• Discrepancies — Aircraft discrepancy tracking and resolution. Discrepancies can feed into the safety module’s hazard identification process.

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People

• Crew — Crew member profiles, qualifications, type ratings, currency tracking, medical status, schedule history, and future/past trip views. Supports filtering by availability and certification.
• Passengers — Passenger directory with profiles, travel preferences, document information, and flight history.
• Owners — For managed aircraft, track owner usage, revenue sharing, expense allocation, payout histories, and vehicle/asset management. Includes owner company briefings and usage summaries.

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Business

• Accounting — Financial operations including estimates, invoicing, pilot payment, transactions, reimbursements, vendor management, and QuickBooks integration.
• Expenses — Expense tracking with categorization, receipt attachments, totals, and reporting. Supports expense payment methods and category configuration.
• Quotes — Create trip quotes with pricing, send proposals to clients, track quote status, and convert accepted quotes into trips. Includes preview and direct send capabilities.
• Trip Requests — Manage inbound trip requests from clients. Review request details, convert to quotes or trips, and track the request lifecycle.
• Reservations — Trip request and reservation management with availability checking, booking workflows, rate management, contracts, guest management, and unit tracking.
• Reports — Comprehensive operational reporting with 40+ report types covering aircraft utilization, crew schedules, fuel consumption, expense summaries, invoice breakdowns, operating costs, owner usage, contract vs. retail fuel analysis, and custom report creation.

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Safety and Quality

• FOQA (Flight Operational Quality Assurance) — Flight data analysis for monitoring operational safety and efficiency. Review individual flight data records, track parameter exceedances, analyze trends across the fleet, and identify airport-specific patterns. FOQA integrates with the Safety module’s risk pipeline to surface operational anomalies.

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Admin

• Settings — Workspace configuration organized into sections:
  • General — Flight department info, email, calendar, schedule, notifications, reports, trip planner, trip requests, menu customization, two-factor authentication
  • Flight — General flight settings, airports and locations, duty time rules, flight log configuration, flight release, tags, trip sheets
  • Flight Planning — APG, flight plan, ForeFlight Dispatch, Garmin FltPlan integrations
  • Fuel — Fuel vendor integrations
  • Maintenance — CMP, due item settings, TraxxAll Aviator
  • Integrations — QuickBooks, Salesforce, SatCom Direct, FuelerLinx, FlightBridge, Baldwin Aviation, Honeywell GoDirect, Polaris, Air Inc, OneCall, third-party vendors
  • eAPIs — Electronic Advance Passenger Information System and FLASH Pass configuration
  • Billing — Payment methods and subscription management
  • Account — Calculation profiles, expense categories, payment methods, passenger codes, vendors
• Documents — Operational document storage for trip sheets, flight releases, and business records.
• Messages — Internal messaging and communication.
• Notifications — Notification center for operational alerts.

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Additional Tools

Several operations features are accessible through the command palette or secondary navigation:

• Weather — Aviation weather data and briefings
• Airports — Airport information database
• FBOs — Fixed-base operator directory and preferences
• Chief Pilot Dashboard — Command center for chief pilots with crew currency, fleet status, and operational oversight
• My Cockpit — Personal pilot dashboard with upcoming trips, flight time totals, and currency tracking
• Fleet Health — Fleet-wide health overview with maintenance status, due items, and utilization metrics
• Risk Score — Operational risk scoring for flights
• SmartScore — Operational safety scoring (shared with safety module)
• In-Flight Display — Passenger-facing flight information display
• Profile — User profile and personal settings
• Training — Operational training tracking

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FBO Module

The FBO module manages fixed-base operator services — hangar facilities, fuel operations, point of sale, reservations, and customer-facing services. It is designed for FBO managers, line service personnel, front desk staff, and fuel operations teams.

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Overview

• Dashboard — FBO operational command center showing current activity, upcoming reservations, fuel status, facility occupancy, and key business metrics. The primary landing page for FBO managers.
• Flight Board — Real-time arrivals and departures tracking. View inbound and outbound aircraft movements, filter by status, and access individual movement details. Includes configurable settings for board display preferences.
• Notifications — FBO-specific alerts and operational notifications.

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Reservations

• Availability — Check hangar and facility availability across date ranges. View open slots and capacity for reservation planning.
• Bookings — Create and manage reservations for hangar space, ramp parking, and other FBO services. Includes booking creation, editing, and lifecycle management.
• Contracts — Manage long-term contracts with recurring customers, including terms, rates, and renewal tracking.
• Guests — Track guest information for walk-in and transient customers who do not have full customer accounts.

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Point of Sale

• Orders — Process sales transactions for fuel, services, merchandise, and other FBO offerings. View order history and individual order details.
• Products — Manage the product and service catalog available for sale, including pricing, descriptions, and categories.
• Customers — Customer directory with profiles, contact information, account history, and preferences.
• Inventory — Track stock levels for merchandise, supplies, and consumables sold through the FBO.

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Facilities

• Units — Manage individual hangars, tie-down spots, ramp positions, and other rentable spaces. Each unit tracks availability, current occupant, dimensions, and pricing.
• Unit Types — Define categories of facilities (e.g., T-hangar, corporate hangar, tie-down) with shared attributes and default pricing.
• Amenities — Configure available amenities (Wi-Fi, power, GPU, lavatory services) that can be associated with units or offered as add-on services.

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Financial

• Invoices — Generate and manage invoices for FBO services, hangar rentals, fuel purchases, and other charges.
• Rates & Pricing — Configure rate structures for facilities, fuel, and services. Create new rate schedules and manage pricing tiers.
• Transactions — View and reconcile financial transactions across all FBO revenue streams.
• Gift Cards — Issue and manage gift cards for FBO services.
• Discounts — Configure discount codes and promotional pricing.
• Tax Codes — Manage tax rates and codes applied to FBO transactions.
• Deposit Policies — Define deposit requirements for reservations and long-term contracts.

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Staff

• Time Clock — Employee clock-in and clock-out tracking for FBO staff, with shift hour calculations.
• Shifts — Schedule and manage staff shifts across FBO operations.
• Tills — Cash drawer management for point-of-sale operations, including opening counts, closing reconciliation, and variance tracking.

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Operations

• Fuel Management — Fuel inventory tracking, dispensing records, pricing management, and vendor coordination.
• Safety — FBO-specific safety tracking for ramp operations, ground handling, and facility safety.
• Maintenance — Facility and equipment maintenance tracking, work orders, and preventive maintenance scheduling.
• End-of-Day Closures — Daily closing procedures including reconciliation, reporting, and shift handoff documentation.

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Reports & Settings

• Reports — FBO operational and financial reports covering revenue, occupancy, fuel sales, customer activity, and staff performance.
• Settings — FBO configuration including facility details, operating hours, service offerings, and integration preferences.

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Maintenance Module

The Maintenance module provides comprehensive aircraft maintenance management with work order tracking, regulatory compliance, parts lifecycle management, and maintenance billing. It is designed for directors of maintenance, mechanics, inspectors, and maintenance planners.

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Overview

• Dashboard — Maintenance command center showing open work orders, overdue due items, fleet health status, upcoming inspections, and key maintenance metrics. The primary landing page for maintenance personnel.
• Fleet Health — Fleet-wide overview of aircraft maintenance status, due items approaching limits, and utilization metrics.

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Fleet

• Aircraft — Aircraft profiles with maintenance-specific views: time-in-service, total cycles, engine hours, and component history.
• Due Items — Track maintenance items, inspections, ADs, and compliance deadlines by aircraft. Monitors both time-based (calendar) and cycle-based (hours, landings, cycles) due dates with configurable warning thresholds. Supports recurring items with automatic interval recalculation.
• Discrepancies — Aircraft squawk and defect tracking with severity classification. Discrepancies can generate work orders and feed into the safety module’s hazard identification process.
• MEL Deferrals — Minimum Equipment List deferral management per 14 CFR 91.213. Track deferred items by MEL category (A, B, C, D), rectification intervals, expiration dates, and certificate numbers. Create, review, and close deferrals with full audit trail.

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Work Orders

• Work Orders — Create, assign, and track maintenance work orders through a full lifecycle: draft, open, in-progress, pending-parts, completed, released, and closed. Each work order includes line items, parts used, labor hours, notes, attachments, and cost tracking. Supports linking to discrepancies and due items.
• Work Order Templates — Reusable templates for common maintenance tasks (e.g., 100-hour inspections, phase checks). Templates include pre-defined items, estimated hours, and priority settings by aircraft type.
• Work Order Verification — Inspector sign-off workflow with return-to-service authorization, certificate number recording, and digital signature capture.

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Compliance

• AD/SB Compliance — Airworthiness Directive and Service Bulletin tracking. Create compliance records, track applicability by aircraft, and monitor compliance status with due dates and completion evidence.
• Compliance Dashboard — At-a-glance view of regulatory compliance status across the fleet, highlighting overdue items and upcoming deadlines.
• Compliance Documents — Repository for maintenance-related compliance documentation, including 8610-2 forms, STCs, and approved data.
• RII Catalog — Required Inspection Items catalog per 14 CFR 135.427. Define inspection items by aircraft type, ATA chapter, interval, and whether they require a Repairman Inspection Authorization (RIA).

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Tracking and Records

• Component Tracking — Track individual components by serial number with time-since-new (TSN), time-since-overhaul (TSO), time-since-major-overhaul (TSMOH), and life-limit tracking in hours, cycles, and calendar months.
• Part Passports — Component birth-to-retirement traceability documenting installation, removal, overhaul, and scrap history per 14 CFR 91.417.
• Tool Calibration — Track tool calibration status, due dates, certificates, and calibration history per 14 CFR 43.13(a).
• Technician Attestations — Maintenance release documentation with technician certificate number, type, and digital attestation for completed work.
• Record Integrity — Cryptographic verification of maintenance records using hash chains, ensuring tamper-evident audit trails for regulatory inspection.
• Logbook — Aircraft maintenance logbook entries with work descriptions, performer details, aircraft hours and cycles at time of maintenance, parts replaced, costs, and mechanic sign-off.

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Analytics and Planning

• SmartScore — Maintenance-specific safety scoring that evaluates fleet health, compliance timeliness, work order completion rates, and component reliability.
• Forecast — Predictive maintenance scheduling showing upcoming due items, calendar-formatted maintenance events, and overdue/critical items requiring immediate attention.
• Planning — Maintenance planning tools for scheduling dock visits, phase checks, and heavy maintenance events with estimated downtime and cost projections.
• Reliability — Reliability program data per 14 CFR 135.421(e). Track PIREPs, MAREPs, component failures, delays, and cancellations by ATA chapter. Analyze trends and recurring squawk patterns to identify systemic issues.
• Costs — Maintenance cost tracking and analysis across labor, parts, outside services, and shop supplies. Break down costs by aircraft, work order type, and time period.

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Billing

• Billing Dashboard — Overview of maintenance billing activity: pending estimates, approved work, invoiced amounts, and outstanding balances.
• Billing Settings — Configure labor rates by mechanic type (A&P, IA, avionics), overtime and AOG multipliers, parts markup tiers, shop supply rules, and payment terms.
• Estimates — Generate detailed billing estimates from work orders with labor, parts, markup, shop supplies, outside services, tax, and not-to-exceed (NTE) amounts. Send estimates to customers, track approval/rejection, and convert to invoices.

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Training Module

The Training module provides adaptive, session-based safety training that goes beyond traditional course completion tracking. It uses intelligent algorithms to personalize the learning experience for each crew member.

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Adaptive Learning

• Session-Based Training — Training is delivered in focused sessions rather than monolithic courses. Each session selects items from the training library based on the learner’s current proficiency and knowledge gaps.
• Difficulty Calibration — The system adjusts item difficulty based on individual performance. Crew members who demonstrate mastery move to more challenging material; those who struggle receive additional practice on foundational concepts.
• Spaced Repetition — Items are scheduled for review at optimal intervals to maximize long-term retention. The system predicts when a learner is likely to forget material and surfaces it for review before that happens.

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Training Domains

Training content is organized into domains aligned with SMS requirements:

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Compliance Tracking

• Records — Maintain training completion records that satisfy Part 5 Section 5.91 requirements.
• Compliance Dashboard — Monitor training currency across the organization with at-a-glance compliance status.
• Assignment — Assign training to individuals or groups with due dates and completion tracking.
• Export — Export training records for regulatory inspections or internal audits.

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Customer Portals

PlaneConnection provides four distinct portal types, each tailored to a different external user persona. All portals are accessed at /{workspace}/portal through a dedicated login and show only the user’s own data.

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Portal Types

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Charter Client Features

• Dashboard — Overview of upcoming trips, recent quotes, outstanding invoices, and account status.
• Trip Requests — Submit new trip requests with route, date, passenger count, and special requirements. Track request status from submission through scheduling.
• Quotes — Review trip quotes sent by your operations team. View pricing breakdowns, compare options, and accept or decline proposals.
• Passengers — Manage passenger profiles with contact information, travel documents, and preferences. Add or update passengers who will be traveling on requested trips.
• Invoices — View and track invoices for completed trips. See payment status, download invoice documents, and review billing history.
• Messages — Direct messaging with your operations team. Threaded conversations keep all trip-related communication organized and accessible.
• Profile — Update personal information, communication preferences, and account settings.

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FBO Customer Features

• Reservations — View, create, and manage hangar and facility reservations.
• Invoices — View invoices and payment history for FBO services.
• Vehicles — Manage vehicle rentals and loaner car assignments.
• Household — Add and manage household members who may use FBO services under the customer’s account.
• Payment Methods — Store and manage payment methods for FBO transactions.
• Profile — Update contact information and preferences.

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Operator-Side Configuration

Operators manage portals through Settings > Portal:

• Portal Settings — Configure portal branding, access rules, and self-service permissions for each portal type.
• Client Management — Add and manage portal client accounts, set access levels, and link clients to their passenger records.

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Portal Auto-Provisioning

When operators create certain records, portal accounts can be automatically provisioned for the associated external users: Auto-provisioned accounts receive an email invitation to set up their credentials. Until the invitation is accepted, the account exists in a pending state. Operators can resend or revoke pending invitations from the client management page.

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Cross-Module Integration

The four modules are not independent systems sharing a login. They share data in ways that strengthen all four: This integration means your SMS is not operating in a vacuum. It has access to the operational reality of your flight department and FBO services, making risk assessments and safety performance monitoring grounded in actual data rather than abstractions.

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Module Enable/Disable

Workspace administrators can enable or disable modules under Settings > Workspace > Modules. This controls what is visible and accessible within the workspace: Certain roles are always available regardless of module state: Account Owner, Admin, Staff, Pilot, Accountable Executive, Mechanic, Auditor, and Sole Proprietor. System roles (System Administrator, Platform Admin) are also always available but cannot be assigned by workspace administrators.

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Module Availability

All four modules are available across all subscription tiers. The tier determines administrative capabilities, not module access:

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