Assign crew and aircraft to legs
How the dispatch board checks a proposed crew assignment, and what you see when it refuses one.
- Open Dispatch. The crew rail on the right lists pilots and cabin crew; the board on the left is the tail-axis timeline.
- Drag a crew member's chip onto a leg, or use the leg's assignment form in the crew rail.
- The rail first asks the compliance engine which of the visible crew are legal for that leg, so it only offers plausible candidates before you commit.
- Drop the assignment. The engine re-checks it for real on drop and either assigns the crew or refuses — the check on drop is the authoritative one, not the rail's pre-filter.
What gets checked
A proposed PIC or SIC is run through a layered set of fail-closed checks before assignment is accepted:
- The tail isn't grounded — an open maintenance write-up blocks assignment outright.
- The crew member is computed as FTL-legal for the leg's proposed times — Part 135 flight-time/duty math run independently for this leg.
- The assignment doesn't double-book the crew member or the tail against another active leg.
- The crew member isn't excluded from pairing with crew already assigned to the leg.
- The crew member holds the type rating the tail requires.
- The crew member has every required check on record, including a current medical.
- The crew member has no active approved-leave or unavailable window covering the leg's date.
- The crew member has no approved hard-day-off bid on record for the leg's date.
- The crew member is an active roster member of your tenant.
A blocked assignment shows the engine's real rule, rulebook reference, and reason verbatim — for example the FTL block that stopped it, or which required check is missing. The dispatch board does not offer a way to override or bypass any of these checks; a refusal that traces to a missing qualification or medical instead offers a direct shortcut to record it on the crew member's own record. Recording the missing credential is what clears the gate — nothing here asserts a legality verdict beyond what your own records show.
None of these checks are ever auto-satisfied on a demo tenant — a grounded tail or an FTL block stops an assignment the same way whether the tenant is real or demo.
Once crew is assigned, track whether they've confirmed it in Track crew acknowledgment. If the assigned tail needs to change, see Swap a tail on a leg or a trip.