Aircraft Airworthiness Checklists – Things You Need for Better Efficiency & More Uptime

What is your time worth? This is a common question that is often quantified by compensation and based on expertise, experience, potential, and the value you bring to a company. In addition, how you use your time is part of delivering value and assessing performance.

In the aviation industry where everything is fast paced, we know your time is super valuable – and being able to reduce the time it takes to complete repetitive tasks is often the goal. One thing that technology brings to the table to help organize and streamline work is customizable checklists to ensure the plane is in tip-top condition and ready to fly. 

Why aircraft airworthiness checklists?

The simple answer is that checklists can be used for literally anything – from standard things like pre-flight and postflight assessments and safety inspections, all the way to hangar walkarounds and disinfecting/cleaning procedures. Aircraft checklists are designed to be for anything and are not limited to specific duties.

Checklists are easy to use when you’re on the go. With a busy schedule, having a checklist on your mobile device to quickly verify that everything has been completed is both convenient and efficient. 

Your time is saved, and your aircraft is up in the air in no time. All because of a checklist.

Using checklists for aircraft maintenance checks

While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversees the regulations and maintenance programs, it is up to the aircraft operator to ensure that maintenance gets done. All aircraft are different and may require maintenance checks at different times than others. Without the right technology in place, like Veryon Tracking, aircraft maintenance checks can be time consuming and tedious. These periodic inspections are mandatory for every commercial and civil aircraft after a defined period of time or usage. These procedures help determine the airworthiness of an aircraft and optimize aircraft uptime. 
 
Aircraft maintenance checks are essential to aircraft operators for a variety of reasons, including to:

• Prevent mechanical failures and ensure flight safety: Safety is top priority and one of the main reasons for regular aircraft maintenance is to make sure passengers and crew are kept safe. Mechanical failures can lead to accidents and put people’s lives at risk. To reduce this risk, regular maintenance checks are a must. It’s important to take any steps available to keep the risk of mechanical issues to a minimum.
• Preserve the life of the aircraft and maintain a record of safe performance: A well-maintained aircraft can last longer than you may expect. Proper aircraft maintenance involves making sure all aircraft are properly managed with extensive records. This will help operators keep track of what work has been done and when – which makes it easier to ensure all parts are properly looked after.
• Minimize aircraft downtime and maximize aircraft uptime: Having unexpected issues keeping your aircraft on the ground is never ideal. A well-maintained aircraft will experience fewer mechanical failures and therefore less likely to cause delays, maximizing aircraft uptime.
• Keep repair costs at bay: To save money, sometimes routine maintenance on aircraft is skipped. However, this will often lead to increased costs. The cost of routine maintenance is generally much lower than that of large repairs, so regular inspections will typically be more cost-effective in the long run. 

With digital, customizable, and downloadable checklists, aircraft operators can streamline inspections and get their aircraft more uptime. Check out the checklist templates below for a sample of the resources you can find within the Veryon Tracking platform:

• Preflight Checklist
• Hangar Duties Checklist
• Disinfection & Cleaning Checklist
• Postflight Inspection Checklist

Enter Veryon Maintenance Tracking Tracking

Veryon Maintenance Tracking offers digital checklists that are completely customizable and can be used for anything at all. They can be created and run for any task and saved for later usage. 

Checklists created within Veryon Maintenance Tracking can be accessed via mobile device or desktop and by multiple users at one time. Each line item added to a checklist is done in real time and can be edited at any time by the user. You can have multiple people completing the same checklist and see exactly who completed each item, when they completed it, and when they’re signed off. You can also update the aircraft times and cycles from the checklist and e-sign it. This becomes especially handy when you are on a time crunch and need to get your tasks done immediately. As an added bonus, you can print completed checklists or blank ones to keep in the aircraft and hangar.

With Veryon Maintenance Tracking, the user has complete control over the contents of their checklists, how many checklists they have, and what the checklists are used for. It is completely up to the user how they would like to use this feature.

Streamline your aircraft maintenance and compliance with our maintenance tracking software that automates workflows, scales reporting, and advances mobile access. Want to see the platform in action?  Book your demo today and we’ll show you how we get our customers more uptime!  

Doesn’t CAMP Offer a custom digital checklist feature?

Yes, CAMP does offer a custom digital checklist feature. However, instead of having control of your own checklist and its creation, your CAMP analyst has to build it for you. This means they will send you an excel template to complete (per aircraft), then you have to send it back to them and wait for them to build it and add it to your system.

That alone can take several days--, if not weeks. In addition, if you have any changes to the checklist, you have to follow the same process all over again. When you finally gain access to your checklist, completing each line item can take up to 30 seconds to refresh and update. Just imagine...if your checklist consists of 30 items, that’s 15 minutes spent completing a checklist when it could have taken you 30 seconds.

As a former CAMP user turned Veryon Tracking user himself, Veryon’s Senior Client Services Manager John Koci recalls his experience using CAMP’s less efficient platform while working as an Aviation Maintenance Manager for a Fortune 500 corporate flight department.

“When we used CAMP’s checklists, we originally had about 70 items for the postflight inspection. Because it was so slow, this meant it would take at least 30 minutes just to fill out the checklist in the CAMP platform. As a workaround, we edited our checklist to four sections of the aircraft. While that significantly cut down the wait time, it wasn’t accurate since so many items were grouped together, and each person couldn’t accurately say what they inspected.” 

Koci says his team eventually terminated the use of CAMP’s checklists and went back to using paper checklists because it was faster and easier to handwrite and sign off on everything versus doing it electronically with CAMP.

Get more efficient with Veryon Maintenance Tracking

Overall, your time is money and highly valuable. You should have aircraft maintenance software that reflects that.

Customizable digital checklists are just one way to save time, improve operational efficiency, and streamline workflows. Veryon Maintenance Tracking can support you with fully customizable digital checklists that can be used for anything in your operation be it pre-flight and post-flight inspections, hangar walkarounds, safety inspections, daily equipment inspections, risk assessments, quarterly audits, and much more.

Get instant access to all your aircraft information where and when you need it most. Book your demo today to see it in action!