The planes that you see flying every day and carrying passengers safely from place to place result from hundreds of people working in tandem. The safety of each passenger and the efficiency of the flight depend on many significant factors.
These people control and coordinate the flight hours before the take-off, and they keep monitoring the flight till a few hours after landing at the destination. For every flight, there is a huge crew working together. They are responsible for safety, scheduling, communication, etc.
You can see a lot happening behind the scenes in the airline industry, and many operations that happen are not visible to ordinary people. Read on to understand the different airline operations in the aviation industry.
The operations in the airline industry can be divided into two: crew control and flight operations support.
Crew Control
The crew control has the following responsibilities:
- Cooperate with every member of the crew.
- Manage unforeseen conditions in a legal, cost-effective, and safe way.
- Book hotel tickets for charter flights.
- Inform all changes to stations for hotel and transportation amendments.
Flight Operations Support
The flight operations are here for different kinds of support. They are classified into five departments.
The various flight operations and their responsibilities are as follows:
1. Flight dispatch
This department of the airlines has the following responsibilities:
- Ensure efficient and secure regular flight plans.
- To give crew briefing on every operational situation.
- It provides the crew with customized flight plans and up-to-date flight documentation.
- To give (delay or file) authorities and air traffic control groups with relevant, up-to-date ATC (Air Traffic Control) schedules/plans.
- To ensure that the crew sticks to the recent regulations and operational procedures at the time of flight planning.
- Make sure that the flight is planned as per the operation manuals. Check whether the plans match with the forecast weather condition and serviceability of the terminals’ necessary en route and facilities.
2. Operations control
This department of the airlines has the following responsibilities:
- To observe the fleet to assure efficient and secure operations of the airline.
- To keep a continuous and precise picture of the position and technical status of every flight/airplane.
- To maintain the regular integrity of the firm’s flight program.
- To ensure that everyone follows the rules and regulations during the operational phase.
- To be updated about the weather conditions and route details.
- Take charge of the situation when flight disruption happens.
- Initiate emergency protocol in case of incidents and hazards involving the aircraft.
3. Navigation
This department of the airlines has the following responsibilities:
- Aerodynamic reviews, navigation, and route analysis charting and aeronautical. Service details. Identify route improvements.
- To optimize and analyze brand-new routings.
- Ensure correct route planning data is available in the flight planning system.
- To support the flight dispatchers in attaining aeronautical data with the appropriate service unit.
4. Performance
The responsibilities of this department are:
- To give aircraft performance technical support to airline operations.
- To observe design and the runway take-off and landing obstacle clearance procedure.
- To monitor and analyze en route performance.
- To perform fuel usage monitoring.
5. Landing and overflight permits
The responsibilities of this department are:
- For securing the seasonal and overflight traffic rights for winter/summer schedules
- Arranging with authorities (airline) of other countries for the seasonal, daily, and charter changes for landing approvals and overflight permits. It covers the scheduling and gaining permits for worldwide operations.
- To assist with commercial departments with call signs per the section operated.
These are the main operations in the aviation industry. And the airlines run smoothly because of these departments working in the background.
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