Aircraft Scheduling

Groundpounder

Groundpounder

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Emerson Bigguns
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Those of you with multiple people that use one airplane, what do you use to schedule flights? Right now my partner and I use google calendar, but he has had issues with it synching with his iDevice. We may be adding a 3rd partner, so I think a better solution needs to be found that is user friendly across all operating systems. Any suggestions?
 
Depends if you want to pay for a service or not. We use aircraftclubs.com for $12/mo per plane but are looking at switching to FlightCircle.
 
Years ago when I was in a partnership with 2 other guys, we set up a rotating week of “primary” use. Week 1, my week. Week 2 2nd guy’s week. Week 3 3rd guys week. Week 4 back to me and so on.

When it was my week, I didn’t have to call anyone. I could just go. If guy 2 or 3 wanted it during that week, they only had to call/ask one person.

That worked well for us. Now there are so many options. I’ve even seen “Cozi” (a family scheduling app) used. It’s free.


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crash7 said:
Years ago when I was in a partnership with 2 other guys, we set up a rotating week of “primary” use. Week 1, my week. Week 2 2nd guy’s week. Week 3 3rd guys week. Week 4 back to me and so on.

When it was my week, I didn’t have to call anyone. I could just go. If guy 2 or 3 wanted it during that week, they only had to call/ask one person.

That worked well for us. Now there are so many options. I’ve even seen “Cozi” (a family scheduling app) used. It’s free.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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We don't have any issues dividing up the time, just need to see when it is scheduled. We just do first come first served.
 
Odd - We use a Google calendar and both of us are iDevice users.

Second the recommendations for aircraftclubs.com and Flight Circle if you're looking for something a bit more purpose-built that can allow things like backup reservations, maintenance reservations, etc.
 
FlightCircle has become very popular and does the job quite well. Not only pilot scheduling, but maintenance, and it can even accept payments if you charge for time internally. It will also sync with personal Google calendars. I wonder, though, whether it might be overkill for 2 or 3.
 
Google Calendar works great for my 4 person partnership. Sounds to me like maybe a little bit of time spent troubleshooting the issue will resolve it, rather than hunting for a totally new solution.
 
Simple solution could be to add a dry erase calendar in the hangar and when someone adds to it, snap a picture and send to everyone. Might be a little work but its easy.
 
midlifeflyer said:
FlightCircle has become very popular and does the job quite well. Not only pilot scheduling, but maintenance, and it can even accept payments if you charge for time internally. It will also sync with personal Google calendars. I wonder, though, whether it might be overkill for 2 or 3.
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It probably is overkill for a group that small, but I love that you can split charges for a flight among multiple people. Flight circle is also cheaper per plane than aircraftclubs.com while providing more robust reporting along with a ton of other features.
 
Ditto - our club switched to Flight Circle last year. I think it also can do billing if that's also part of your partnership.
 
Our club uses pilotschedule. Its been great as well.
 
Google Calendar works just fine on my iPhone, iPad, and Samsung tablet. We four schedule first-come, first served, with a limit of 3 flights per person on the calendar at any one time. For trips longer than two weeks, must get everyone's agreement.
 
We ran into the same thing in a 3-owner setup. I’d pick based on sync reliability first, not feature depth.

I’d compare:
1) shared iCloud calendar (if everyone is mostly Apple)
2) Outlook shared calendar (best cross-platform consistency in my experience)
3) aviation-specific tools like Flight Circle/CoFlyt (if you want aircraft-specific workflows)

The checklist that matters:
- reliable iOS/Android/web sync
- real conflict prevention (not just overlap visibility)
- maintenance/inspection blocks
- good alerts/reminders
- recurring reservation support

For a 2–3 partner group, I’d start with Outlook shared calendar for stability, then move to an aviation-specific system only if maintenance blocking and usage tracking become a constant pain point.
 
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