Planning, work packs and release to service

Planning and what is due

From the FlyPack CAMO manual

Planning & work packs in the rail. Three buttons at the top: New work pack, Estimate on a pack, and Capacity view.

Where the due dates come from

Every task in an aircraft's maintenance programme has an interval — hours, calendar months, landings or cycles. FlyPack CAMO compares each interval against the aircraft's current counters and works out what remains. A task with more than one interval is driven by whichever runs out first, and that one is shown as the driving unit.

Fitted components are forecast too. An engine approaching its overhaul, a propeller past its hours, a life-limited part running out of calendar — each is computed in the same pass, in the same three states, and appears in the same lists. It is translated into the aircraft's counters first: what the airframe will read when the part runs out. See Components and their lives.

One difference from a task, and it is deliberate: a life limit carries no tolerance. A programme task can have a written band either side of its due point; a part flown past its limit is unserviceable, not "inside the band".

They go on a work pack like anything else, and signing one off asks what was actually done to the part — see Work packs and estimates.

An aircraft that has a component life and a programme task written for the same limit will show both, because they are two records saying the same thing. That duplicate task was the old way of getting a component into the forecast; it is no longer needed, and deleting it is the way to stop seeing the item twice.

Forecasts recompute when the counters change: after a flight is signed, after the totals are corrected, after any item on a work pack is signed, and overnight. If a number looks stale, the counters are usually the thing that is stale — see Aircraft records.

The three states

• Overdue — the interval has passed.
• Due soon — inside the warning window.
• OK — everything else, not listed.

An aircraft with nothing overdue and nothing due soon reads "Nothing due in the forecast window". That is not the same as nothing being due ever; it means nothing falls inside the window being forecast.

Remaining, and the tolerance meter

Remaining is how much is left before the task is due: hours, days, landings or cycles. It can be negative, which is what overdue means.

A margin in hours, and the airframe hour a lane's caption says a task falls due at, are written the way your organisation writes an hour figure — 20.7 h left or 20:42 h left. The task's interval and its tolerance stay decimal either way, because those are quoted from the manual. See How hours are written.

Where a task has a tolerance, it is drawn as the band past the due point — the flattened ASI arc: green normal, amber caution, red never-exceed, with the needle where the aircraft stands and a thin line at the nominal due point.

A tolerance is permission to run past the nominal due point without the task becoming overdue; it is not extra interval, and using it does not move the next one. Signing an item outside its tolerance band requires a written justification on the work pack.

Projected due date

For an hours-driven task, FlyPack CAMO projects a calendar date from how much the aircraft has been flying — its average hours per day over the last year. It is a planning aid, not a limit. An aircraft that has been standing shows a projected date far in the future; that changes the moment it starts flying again.

Capacity view

Capacity view lays the planned packs out against time, so two aeroplanes are not booked into the same week by accident. It reads the planned start, planned end and ground time on each pack — which is why those fields are worth filling in even when the dates are provisional.

Work the programme does not know about

A pack can carry lines the programme never forecast: work read off a job card with Add from PDF, or an ad-hoc line. They appear on the pack and in the capacity view like any other, but nothing here falls due for them and nothing moves when they are signed — they are this visit's work only. See Work packs and estimates.

Nothing is due but the aircraft has no certificate

An aircraft with no airworthiness review certificate on file reads that way rather than showing a forecast, because the certificate is the thing standing between it and the ground. FAA Part 91 aircraft are excepted — they do not carry one.

Likewise a grounded aircraft shows the reason it is grounded in place of what is due next.

Work packs and estimates

From the FlyPack CAMO manual

A work pack gathers the tasks to be done in one visit, so they can be quoted, scheduled, signed off and released together.

Work pack, work order — one thing here

In the wider trade the two are different documents. A work order is the instruction from the operator or the CAMO to whoever does the work — this aircraft, these tasks, by this date, at this price. A work pack is what the maintenance organisation makes of it: the task cards, worksheets, references and parts list the engineers actually work from. A work order becomes a work pack when the shop accepts it and compiles the cards.

FlyPack CAMO keeps one record and calls it a work pack. It is created by the CAMO with everything a work order carries — the aircraft, the performing organisation, the dates, the estimate — and then worked, signed item by item and released on the same record. There is no moment at which it turns into something else, and nothing to convert. The reference is WP-YYYY-NNNN for that reason.

The word work order does appear in one place: the database table is called WorkOrder, which is what an integration or a backup will show. It is the same record.

Building one

Planning → New work pack, or the same button from the dashboard, the fleet list or the aircraft.

Below the fields, items due — tick what goes into this visit: this aircraft's due tasks, its fitted components running out of life, and its open defects. Overdue components and grounding defects arrive ticked; nothing from the programme does, because a hundred- hour inspection is three hundred lines and a dialog that opens with all of them ticked is making the choice rather than offering it.

A running total of items, estimated labour and what it is chargeable at sits under the list.

Add from AMP opens the aircraft's maintenance programme, where you tick the tasks that are due and add them in one go; Tick all due selects everything overdue or due soon. Directives and open defects are added the same way.

Add from PDF, beside it, reads a task list off a document — see below.

The pack is created when you save the dialog. Adding tasks does not create it on its own, and closing without saving discards it.

Add from PDF

For work that arrives already itemised on paper: a job card, an inspection check card, a repair scheme's work instruction, a task list exported from another CAMO's software. Add from PDF reads the document and offers every task on it, the way Add from AMP offers the programme.

Choose a PDF — up to forty pages — and it is read there and then, which takes about half a minute for a few pages. Nothing is created and nothing is filed: the document is being transcribed, not kept, so there is nothing to clean up if you add none of it.

What comes back, at the top: the file's name and page count, how many tasks were read, and what the document calls itself — "Check 50 hours", its revision, and the registration it names. If that registration is not the aircraft the pack is for, an amber banner says so — a check card for one aeroplane ticked onto another's pack is exactly the mistake worth a banner.

Then the tasks, grouped under the document's own section headings — Propeller, Engine, Landing Gear — each with:

Every task starts ticked — you chose the document to use it — with All and None on each section to work by group. Sign-off columns (Mech, Insp) are not tasks and are not read. Add the ticked tasks puts them on the pack; Choose another starts again with a different file.

Back on the dialog the lines sit in the list with the rest, each saying which section and which file it came from, and the button reads Add from PDF · 36. Where no title had been typed, the document's own name for itself is offered as the pack's. The pack's total shows no estimate against a line the document gave no hours for, and the labour figure counts only what was printed.

What a line off a PDF is on the pack

An ad-hoc line — its number, its citation and its words, on one line (1.01 · CSM F172, Sect.14-1 — Coiful elicei si suportul coifului…), labelled Additional work on the pack. It has nothing behind it: no programme task to reforecast, no defect to close. Signing it off records that it was done, by whom and when, and nothing more.

That is the right shape for one visit's work, and the wrong one for a check that repeats. A 50-hour check belongs on the programme, where it is forecast, falls due, and comes onto every pack from Add from AMP with its compliance moving the next due date. Put it there once with Build from the manuals on the aircraft's Programme tab; use Add from PDF for the job card that will not come round again.

Reading a PDF needs the installation's document reader — the same one Build from the manuals uses. Where it is not configured, the button says so and the programme route still works.

Working the pack

Issue from the store asks only three things — find it (part number, description or batch), how much, and a note. Everything else travels with the lot: its batch, its release document and its price, so the same paperwork is not typed twice. Return asks how much is coming back.

| Estimate | The quote, as a PDF |

| Cancel pack | With a reason. It stays on the record because it was planned |

| Issue CRS | Release to service — see its own page |

Signing an item records that the work was accomplished. It resets that task's interval, moves the due list, and — on a directive — writes the compliance record. It does not release the aircraft.

The pack goes to In work as soon as anything on it is signed, and the forecast is recomputed on every item rather than only at the end, because a pack can sit part-signed for days waiting on parts.

An item signed outside its tolerance band requires a justification.

What can go on a pack

Four kinds of line, and the sign-off asks different questions of each:

Signing off a component

A component line asks what happened to the part, and there is no default:

• Overhauled — the same part goes back on. Time since overhaul goes to zero and the overhaul date is recorded. Time since new keeps running: an overhaul does not make a part new.
• Replaced — a different part goes on. The one that came off is marked unserviceable, away for repair, back on the shelf or scrapped, whichever happened. The new one is recorded with its own part number, serial number, life kind, limits and hours — and the same rules apply as anywhere else: a hard-time or life-limited part needs a limit, and a limit in months needs a date to count from.

Both then ask for the release it goes back on — the document, who issued it, the form number and the date. There is no outcome without one:

ML.A.501 permits a component to be installed only when it is released on the appropriate document, and a part going back on after an overhaul is an installation.

What it writes, either way: the fitment on record is closed against this pack, with the aircraft's hours at removal, and a new fitment opened in the same position against the new release document. That is what physically happened — the part came off, work was done, a part went back on — and anything less would leave an installation whose paperwork describes work done after it.

It refuses:

• "Say what was done to the component — overhauled and refitted, or replaced. Signing it off without saying would leave its hours where they are while the pack claimed the life was cleared."
• "A component goes back on a release document — the kind, who issued it, and when."
• "The release document is dated after the work was done. Check the dates."
• "That component is no longer fitted to this aircraft, so this line cannot clear its life." — it came off some other way while the pack was open. Take the line off, or fit the part again first.
• "A replacement needs at least its part number."

Afterwards the component's Remaining reads its full life again, and it leaves the due list — which is the point, and the thing an ad-hoc line could never do.

Hours on a pack are two different things

A pack shows both, and they do not follow the same convention:

• The aircraft's hours — at 7,246:48 h on the builder, Airframe at sign-off, a component's TSN and TSO — are clocks, and follow the organisation's setting.
• Man-hours — a task's estimate, the pack's Labour, est. 6.5 h — stay decimal, because they are multiplied by a rate and end up on an invoice.

See How hours are written.

The estimate

Estimate produces a PDF: labour by task at the organisation's rate card, parts at their recorded sale price, and the total.

Mandatory items are marked. A line is tagged MANDATORY when it is an airworthiness directive, a task required by one — its code begins AD: — or a grounding defect. The estimate subtotals those separately, as of which mandatory, and says whether they can be separated from the rest of the work.

That distinction is there because an estimate is often the moment an owner asks what can be left out. Mandatory work is not the owner's to decline, and an estimate presenting every line as equally optional invites exactly that conversation.

The Estimate button sits next to Issue CRS because that is the screen somebody is on when the owner rings to ask what it will come to — and it stops being offered once the work is released, where the invoice is the document.

Where the money goes

Work released is work billable: the pack becomes chargeable when its certificate is issued, and appears under Done but not billed in Billing.

Releasing the pack is a separate act with its own rules — see Release to service (CRS).

Release to service (CRS)

From the FlyPack CAMO manual

Where it is

A certificate of release to service is issued from a work pack, not on its own. Planning → open the pack → the Release to service card at the bottom → Issue CRS.

There is no other route to one, and that is deliberate: a release certifies that particular work was carried out, so it needs the pack that says what the work was.

Two separate acts, and people confuse them

• Signing an item records that the work was accomplished. It is the maintenance record, it resets that task's interval, and it is what moves the due list. On a component line it goes further and moves the part — the fitment is closed and a new one opened against a new release document, which is a release of the component, under ML.A.501. That is not the aircraft's certificate of release to service and does not stand in for one.
• Issuing the CRS records that the aircraft is released to service. It covers the pack as a whole, and it is what lets the aircraft fly again.

They are separate in the regulation and usually separate in time — a pack can sit part-signed for days waiting on parts. Signing the last item does not release the aircraft; somebody still has to issue the certificate.

Before it will let you

The Issue CRS button refuses, saying which of these it is:

1. The pack has items on it. An empty pack cannot be released — a release certifies work that was carried out, so there has to be work.
2. Every item is signed or deferred. Nothing may still be open. The refusal counts them for you.
3. The pack has not already been released. One pack, one certificate; the message names the certificate that already exists.
4. The pack is not cancelled.

Choosing the basis

The basis must be one the aircraft's regime recognises. The dialog only offers the ones that apply, and the API refuses anything else:

Choosing who signs

The person has to hold the matching authorisation, current — not suspended, not expired. If they do not, the release is refused by name: "X does not hold a current CRS_ML801 authorisation and cannot sign this release."

That refusal is the entire point of recording authorisations, so the fix is never to pick somebody else who happens to be in the list — it is to check whether the right person's authorisation has lapsed, on Organisation info.

If the dialog says nobody available holds the authorisation the chosen basis needs, either the basis is wrong for who is doing the work, or nobody has been given that authorisation yet.

Pilot-owner is checked hardest

ML.A.801(b)(3) reaches only the Appendix II task list and nothing else. A pilot-owner release is refused if any signed item on the pack is outside it, and the refusal names the tasks. That work needs a Part-145 organisation or independent certifying staff — it is not a matter of finding a different signatory.

What it writes

The reference is generated: CRS-2026-0001, next in the year's series. You do not type it.

Filled in from the pack unless you overwrite them in the dialog:

• Scope — the pack reference and title, then the work carried out.
• Limitations — anything deferred and carried forward, listed. Blank when nothing was deferred.

Recorded automatically at the moment of issue: the airframe hours and landings as they then stood — written the way your organisation writes an hour figure, so the certificate carries the same reading as the records behind it, see How hours are written — the issuer's name, licence and approval reference, and a snapshot of the authorisation they held. The snapshot matters — an authorisation that lapses next year must not change what this release said.

What happens to everything else

Issuing the certificate also:

• closes the pack — status Completed, with the actual man-hours totalled. A line with nothing behind it — Additional work, read off a job card or typed — is closed with the rest and reforecasts nothing, because there was never a due date for it from its items. Its items can no longer be changed.
• embodies any standard change signed off on the pack, linked to this certificate as its evidence. Recorded here rather than left to be done afterwards, because the release is the moment it becomes real — doing it by hand meant it usually did not happen, and the airworthiness review then reported "no release to service" against a modification that had in fact been properly released.
• makes the work billable.

Afterwards

The Certificate button on the same card renders the CRS as a PDF, with the releasing statement for the basis it was issued under.

A certificate cannot be withdrawn or deleted. Nothing in FlyPack CAMO deletes a record of this kind. If a release was issued in error, that is a finding to be raised and answered, not something to be tidied away.