Tracking outside duties to prevent FTL breaches
Tracking internal rosters is relatively straightforward, but monitoring Flight Time Limitations (FTL) becomes complex when pilots perform duties outside your organisation. This liability applies whether crew are shared across a multi-AOC corporate group or brought in as freelance contractors.
National Aviation Authorities worldwide place the ultimate responsibility for fatigue management directly on the operators. Managing this risk requires active oversight rather than passive trust. Without a centralised system to track external activities, operators face an operational blind spot that exposes the business to retroactive regulatory breaches.
The invisible regulatory liability
The legal mandate for fatigue management is clear across global jurisdictions. In Europe, under EASA ORO.FTL.110, the Air Operator Certificate (AOC) holder is legally required to actively plan rosters, calculate cumulative hours, and prevent crew fatigue. Furthermore, EASA Part-CAT (CAT.GEN.MPA.100(b)(5)) dictates that crew members working for multiple operators must maintain their individual records and provide the necessary data to each operator to ensure safe scheduling.
Across the Atlantic, the FAA enforces a similar lookback standard. Under 14 CFR § 135.267, the regulations explicitly state that no certificate holder may assign, and no crew member may accept, an operational assignment if the pilot’s total flight time in all commercial flying exceeds specified limits.
Despite these clear boundaries, the daily reality for many flight departments involves a repetitive manual chase. Schedulers are forced to contact contract crews via phone calls or text messages right before dispatch to ask about their rolling 28-day totals or recent external flights. This reliance on manual spreadsheets and memory creates a distinct risk. Because external hours are often logged well after a flight has taken place, an accidental FTL infraction by a freelancer is permanently recorded in your operational logs, creating an immediate compliance risk during audits.
Three realities of FTL tracking
To eliminate this guesswork, an operational platform must act as an automated shield. This approach transforms FTL tracking from an administrative burden into a real-time compliance workflow across three distinct operational realities.
1. Multi-AOC group connectivity
For larger aviation groups managing multiple distinct operator certificates, tracking shared pilots typically creates massive data silos. Skylegs addresses this through an interconnected system architecture.
Each AOC within the corporate group operates in its own secure digital environment to protect operational integrity, while the underlying systems communicate in the background. When a pilot flies a sector for one AOC, their accumulated hours and rest requirements automatically sync to the other AOC. This instant synchronisation ensures that shared group pilots are never double-booked or scheduled in violation of FTL caps, making multi-AOC operations entirely seamless.
2. The freelance logbook sync
Contract and freelance pilots present a unique challenge: they need to protect the privacy of their external client work, while operators must capture accurate duty data to remain compliant.
The platform resolves this tension by allowing freelance pilots to input and share their external logbook totals directly with the utilising AOC, without disclosing sensitive client names or operational details. This creates a functional balance of privacy and visibility. The central FTL engine instantly factors these external timelines into its crew currency calculations, keeping the operator fully compliant while respecting the freelance pilot’s independent business boundaries.
3. “Flight duties” safeguards
Relying on calendar entries by crew members or vague schedule blocks makes it easy for schedulers to overlook compounding fatigue variables.
Within the platform, schedulers utilise a dedicated, explicit entry type: Flight Duties. This designation is treated entirely separately from standard office work, standby, or ground training courses. The moment a Flight Duty is added to a crew member’s timeline, the FTL engine automatically processes the data against regional lookback windows. If assigning that pilot to an upcoming tail triggers an FTL or rest period violation, the system flags the conflict and blocks the assignment before dispatch occurs.
Conclusion
Schedulers deserve total peace of mind, and crews deserve workflows that respect both their privacy and their safety boundaries. By replacing the chaotic chase of texts and spreadsheets with automated sync structures and proactive assignment blocks, flight departments can successfully eliminate the external duty blind spot. True FTL compliance relies on tools that prevent breaches automatically, rather than identifying errors after an audit finding.
