The Module Seasonal Flight Plan
The seasonal flight scheduling software Seasonal Flight Plan is an integral part of the application (Ground Handling System). The software module's basic functions cover the complete seasonal flight scheduling, starting with the creation or an optional import of flight schedule data from an external source (e.g. official national flight coordination institutions). The imported data can then be edited and completed according to individual requirements – the addition of new flights is also possible at any time. Furthermore, the functions include the "chaining" of arriving and departing flights to create so-called "rotations" (i.e. a data relation between the arrival of an aircraft and its departure, helping to keep track of its stay on the airport).
The software offers an unfolded view displaying all individual flights of a season as well as a condensed view where all regular flights are shown summarised in "periods". Finally, Seasonal Flightplan also offers an automated generation of daily flight schedules which can be used as a basis for operative ground handling processes.
The software Seasonal Flightplan is used for the creation and updating of seasonal flight schedules as well as for the provision of daily flight schedules for the operative handling business. Thus, the actual functions can be subdivided chronologically into three areas:
Creation of a seasonal flight schedule: The first step usually is the capturing of basic seasonal flight schedule data. This is often done by manual creation of flight records. Alternatively, a flight schedule can be created with the (optional!) module Sita: This module can be used to import seasonal SITA messages which can then be used to create a seasonal flight schedule. As another alternative, flight data records can be imported from a different external file source (e.g. a file provided by an official national flight coordination institution) by using optionally available add-on modules or interfaces (e.g. the module Coordinator Import).
Editing, completing and updating of flight schedule data: After the basic data has been entered, the seasonal flight schedule data can be edited and completed manually in Seasonal FLightplan. The available functions also include the chaining of arrivals and departures to rotations as well as the creation of a condensed seasonal flight schedule summarising regular flights into single data records (periods). For editing flight schedule data, the module views Expanded and Condensed are available.
Export of daily flight schedules: From the seasonal flight schedules, daily flight schedules for the operative handling business can be created and exported. This is done either automatically according to a definable time scheme or manually by using a small optional software module.
The following chapters provide a detailed description of the available modules and their functions.