Licence and medical currency tracking: a reminder is not enough, you need a block

Most gaps found in an audit can be fixed afterwards: a missing signature is added, a form is filled in again. A flight flown on an expired medical or rating cannot be fixed; the flight has happened. That makes currency tracking the part of the record system with the least tolerance for error.

Why the tracking spreadsheet is not enough

Most schools keep currency in a table: person, document, expiry date. The table may be correct; the problem is that it is not where anyone looks while making the plan. It falls short in four situations.

1. The person making the plan does not look at the table

The operations officer building the morning plan sees aircraft and times on the screen in front of them; the document date is in another file. Checking the table for every row does not happen in practice, and the first busy day is the day it gets skipped.

2. The required document depends on the exercise

Night flying needs a night rating, instrument training needs an instrument rating, certain types need a class rating. “Their licence is valid” does not mean it is valid for this exercise. The table does not hold the mapping between exercise and document.

3. Exam and theory validities get forgotten

Medical and licence expiry dates stick in the mind; theoretical exam validity, language proficiency and the instructor’s own revalidation date enter the table late or never.

4. Renewed documents are not entered

The student brings a new medical, a copy goes in the file, the date in the table is not updated. The table now errs in the other direction: it shows a current person as expired, and the team stops trusting it.

Moving the check to planning time

The fix is not to update the table more often but to put the check where the plan is made. It has three parts.

A currency matrix. Each person’s card holds their documents with expiry date and days remaining. Which exercise requires which document is defined once: a night exercise requires a night rating, an instrument exercise an instrument rating.

A block at planning time. When a person is selected on the scheduling screen, the system looks at the documents that exercise requires. If one has expired, the person cannot be selected and the reason shows in the row. A block, not a warning; warnings get clicked through, blocks do not.

Document upload and approval. When a new document is uploaded, the date updates on its own and an authorised person approves it. An unapproved document does not count as current, which removes the “copy in the file but date out of date” situation.

Reminders: to whom and when

The block is the last line of defence; reminders are for not losing a flying day. A reminder to the person thirty days before expiry, to the person and management at fifteen days, and daily in the final week is enough. Reminders should not sit in email; they should go to whichever channel the team actually reads.

Instructors’ own revalidations belong on the same list. Because they change less often than student documents they are the most forgotten, and usually the document with the heaviest consequences for the school.

In short

The measure of currency tracking is not whether the table is up to date but whether a flight can be scheduled on an expired document. Once the check sits inside the scheduling screen, the table and the reports come out right on their own.