Online schedulers for flying clubs

flyingcheesehead

flyingcheesehead

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iMooniac
Hi all,

We're a somewhat-happy customer of aircraftclubs.com but they have really jacked their rates now that they've added some features so we're shopping for a new scheduler. What does your club use?

Features we want:
* Scheduling (duh) including backup reservations
* Maintenance and squawk tracking
* The ability for people to send an email to the whole club or individuals

I'm familiar with three sites:
* AircraftClubs.com
* FlightSchedulePro
* Flight Circle

Does anyone have any feedback on these? Are there any others I'm not aware of that would have the features we want?

Thanks!
 
We use ScheduleMaster. It's pretty basic, but offers all of the features you want. Additionally, it offers an 800 number to call in and make/change schedules (I've never used it, but some of the older club members use it all the time).

I think our Treasurer is/was looking into Flight Circle, though, since (according to him) it could allow us to combine our scheduling and accounting software into one.
 
Mine uses Schedule Master. It's not the prettiest tool out there, but it works rather well and I've never had a problem. As Marty mentioned, I had a question about it and emailed SM's help desk and received a quick and helpful response.

My CFI also uses Schedule Master for students to book his time.
 
I briefly belonged to a club that used Flight Schedule Pro. Seemed to work out fine, I can't think of anything on the user end that was lacking.
 
Sounds like a relatively easy project to DIY.
 
goairplane.com. I believe it is pretty inexpensive and pretty easy to use.
 
I've used Schedule Master at three different clubs. It's completely adequate as long as you use the maintenance squawks. Pretty old-school interface, though. All web based, and reasonably usable on a smartphone.

A fourth club uses Paperless141. It S U C K S. It's full of bugs and only offers some of its functionality over the web.
 
The club I used to be in used FlightSchedulePro and it worked pretty well.
 
As long-time users of AircraftClubs.com, we're in the same line of thinking... be careful what you ask for, as back the day we whined that alto the app was cheap yet functional, it was essentially abandoned when it came to support.

Now that it's been bought/acquired/whatever, the (new) owner(s) feel like they've gilded it in gold and priced it accordingly.

We're shopping, too.
 
Timmer said:
Mine uses Schedule Master. It's not the prettiest tool out there, but it works rather well and I've never had a problem. As Marty mentioned, I had a question about it and emailed SM's help desk and received a quick and helpful response.

My CFI also uses Schedule Master for students to book his time.
Click to expand...

When my current club switched to ScheduleMaster, I emailed them about a bug, and they fixed it really quickly, i.e., within a day or two IIRC.
 
My club uses flightSchedulePro. It does everything you ask for and I've never had an issue with it.
 
we use aircraftclubs.com and are happy.
 
I always just assumed clubs used a google calendar or something equally simple and free, but maybe I'm under-thinking what it needs to be able to do.

Our club unfortunately has no online scheduling currently, but I've heard rumors it's coming.
 
I didn't realize there were so many online scheduling options... which one is the free one that makes money off ad revenue and direct marketing of products/services?
 
Another vote for Schedulemaster. I am a user, not a maintainer, but from this limited perspective it is perfectly adequate for the job.

-Skip
 
Greenfolder is good for $40/month. Doug gives good support.
 
RFC has used ScheduleMaster for years, and it is very simple and reliable; the inclusion of the telephone response function is useful. I assume it's cheap, as the club is very careful with a dollar.
 
dmspilot said:
I run FlyingSchedule.Net, check it out and let me know what you think.
Click to expand...

That front page is simple (nice), discusses up-time (well done--is it hosted on Amazon's cloud?), etc., but would benefit from some screenshots and functionality descriptions to encourage one to sign up for the free trial.

Is this your site/project?
 
My FBO uses Flight Schedule Pro, and I've worked fairly extensively on the admin side of it and like it quite a lot. It will easily do everything you asked.
 
Flight Schedule Pro for every school I've ever rented from. It's pretty straight forward.
 
Where I did my training, they used FlightTrain. It's probably more than what any club would need. The club I'm with now uses AircraftClubs. I only have experience as an end-user though.
 
My flight school used a dated online scheduler, Quickbooks for billing, and a whiteboard for maintenance. I started Flight Circle to create a low-cost option that combined everything into one system. Our background is web development for 10+ years. We're just getting started and already have a complete solution to streamline any organization. Accounting is tightly integrated and gives users direct access to their flight history and current balance. Flight Circle works more like a native application, and it's mobile-friendly.

If I can answer any questions, please ask or PM. I'd love to know what folks would like to see so we can plan that direction for development.

Great discussion here - thanks for posting iMoonaic.
 
Hey Josh,

My club just starting using flight circle. The main feedback was the mobile web interface needs a little improving. You need to turn the horizontal scroll for the daily reservations into a vertical scroll, and IMO the buttons need to be spaced better.

Other than that I didn't hear any other complaining, so it seems like you are doing a good job in other aspects.
 
EdFred said:
Sounds like a relatively easy project to DIY.
Click to expand...

+1 this

I don't see how someone could charge for a subscription to what amounts to a shared calendar. Use a generic shared calendar app for free, add entries based on tail#, renters name and phone#.

I'm probably over simplifying, I guess if you add enough complexity to the operation and bells/whistles to the app, I could see it being a one-off app purchase.
 
As a user (not maintainer/admin), I think ScheduleMaster is ugly and clunky to use, and works poorly on a mobile device. I've heard good things about Flight Circle.
 
mercurial said:
Hey Josh,

My club just starting using flight circle. The main feedback was the mobile web interface needs a little improving. You need to turn the horizontal scroll for the daily reservations into a vertical scroll, and IMO the buttons need to be spaced better.

Other than that I didn't hear any other complaining, so it seems like you are doing a good job in other aspects.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback mercurial. Have you tried the different views? There is a vertical option. If you have a favorite view you can set a default for mobile and desktop. Keep an eye out for more mobile updates soon though.
 
joshua said:
Thanks for the feedback mercurial. Have you tried the different views? There is a vertical option. If you have a favorite view you can set a default for mobile and desktop. Keep an eye out for more mobile updates soon though.
Click to expand...

Yes, I see it now. That view works much better and should be default.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
That front page is simple (nice), discusses up-time (well done--is it hosted on Amazon's cloud?), etc., but would benefit from some screenshots and functionality descriptions to encourage one to sign up for the free trial.

Is this your site/project?
Click to expand...

Thank you for the feedback. Yes it's my project. It's on a cloud provider somewhat similar to Amazon's.
 
jimbilly said:
+1 this

I don't see how someone could charge for a subscription to what amounts to a shared calendar. Use a generic shared calendar app for free, add entries based on tail#, renters name and phone#.

I'm probably over simplifying, I guess if you add enough complexity to the operation and bells/whistles to the app, I could see it being a one-off app purchase.
Click to expand...
It kind of depends on the mission. Yeah, if it's 3 guys and a 172, a generic free group calendar will do just fine. Change that to 60 people booking 8 aircraft and a team of 6 instructirs and needing to make backup reservations and notifications, and confirm qualification, and you need something else.
 
It's not a popularity contest, but over the course of a few years, I've been a member of one group that used Aircraftclubs and 6 that use FlightSchedulePro. The latter seems to fulfill a lot of needs except it does a pretty bad job of multi-day backup reservations. Not sure anyone does it better.
 
Our club just switched from aircraftclubs.com to skymanager.com. skymanager.com is pretty rubbish and looks like it's a project that one guy created in his spare time and then stopped bothering to update. It's appears very unprofessional and most of the members I speak to are very disappointed. I'd avoid it if I were you.
 
I'm currently looking into setting up some scheduling for my plane partnership. It's currently just two of us and scheduling consists of shooting a text to each other. I'm in charge of maintenance for the most part and have all plane related documentation either in a binder at my house or on a Google Drive.

Moving forward we're adding two more people to the 172 and picking up a 2nd plane (Type TBD) and then breaking that into shares as well. So I found this thread about the various applications and as some people pointed out it seems to be for larger clubs/rentals/instruction type places.

My plan right now is to just make a Google Calendar, share it between the 4 of us and we can schedule on that. We can also use the Google Calendar mobile app to make it easier. For documentation I'll share the Google Drive space and they can read logs, look at the financials or whatever.

Anyone done something similar and if so how'd it turn out.
 
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