Start a flight and close it out

Press Start flight before you go. Until you close the flight, anyone who opens the aircraft sees that it’s out and who has it. When you land, you close the flight with the ending readings, and that puts it in the Logbook.

Start the flight

1. Open the aircraft’s Dashboard and press Start flight. On a phone, it’s the raised button in the middle of the tab bar.
2. Check the starting hobbs. RampMates asks Confirm … start hobbs? with the reading where the last flight ended. If the meter shows that number, leave it.
3. Enter Starting fuel (gallons), what the gauges read now.
4. If you have a booking on this aircraft that starts within an hour of now, RampMates asks Link to your … reservation? and ticks it for you. Leave it ticked if this is that booking. The schedule then shows the aircraft as flying, and closing the flight completes the booking. Untick it if you’re flying outside your booking.
5. Press Yes, start flight.

A Flight in progress bar now runs across the top of the app. It shows who is flying, the starting hobbs and how long ago the flight started. It stays there until the flight is closed.

Close it out when you land

1. Press Close out flight on the Flight in progress bar. You can also press End flight on the dashboard, or in the middle of the tab bar on a phone.
2. Under Route, enter the airports in FROM and TO. If you came back to the field you left from, fill in FROM and press Local flight — same field.
3. Under Hobbs, enter the End reading. If the aircraft has a tach meter, enter End tach too.
4. Under Fuel, enter End gal. Leave Price per gallon on From purchase, or choose Manual and type what you paid. See fuel and receipts.
5. Add Comments if you want to. If something needs fixing, press Attach a squawk to this flight and describe it.
6. Press Close flight.

While you type, the bottom of the form shows the Duration, Fuel used and Est. cost. Est. cost there is only the fuel used times the price per gallon. The Logbook shows what the flight costs under the aircraft’s own pricing. When you’re done, you land on the Logbook with your new flight on it.

Typing readings

You don’t need a decimal point. The last digit is always the tenths, so typing 28437 gives you 2843.7. On money fields the last two digits are the cents.

Why you never type the starting hobbs

Each flight starts where the previous flight on the aircraft ended. RampMates takes the highest ending hobbs in the log, and the ending tach with it. The log never has a gap or an overlap, and you only read the meter when you land.

If the meter in the aircraft shows more than RampMates does, someone flew without logging it. Press Actual hobbs reads differently? Set your own start hobbs and enter what the meter says. If the aircraft has a tach meter, fill in Start tach too. Once you close your flight, the hours in between show up in the Logbook as an Unlogged flight, and whoever flew them can fill them in.

If the meter shows less than RampMates does, you can’t start lower. Most likely the last flight’s ending reading was typed wrong. That flight’s pilot or an admin can correct it.

If you didn’t go

On the Flight in progress bar, press Cancel, then Yes, cancel. That deletes the open flight. If it was linked to your booking, the booking is still on the schedule but no longer checked out. If starting the flight added a Fuel purchase to the Logbook, that entry stays.

Note

Only the flight’s own pilot, or a hangar admin, can close or cancel it. Mechanics don’t get Start flight at all.

If something goes wrong

• “There’s already an open flight for this aircraft.” Someone else started a flight on this aircraft after your page loaded. Reload, and the Flight in progress bar shows who. That pilot or an admin has to close it before anyone can start another.
• “You can only close your own open flight” or “You can only delete your own flights”. You pressed Close out flight or Cancel on someone else’s flight. Ask them, or an admin, to do it.
• “start_hobbs (…) can’t be before the current known hobbs (…)”, or the same for start_tach. You set your own starting reading lower than where the last flight ended. Use the reading RampMates offers. If that one is wrong, get the previous flight corrected.
• “start_fuel_gallons (…) is more than 5 gal below the current known fuel level (…)”. RampMates expected more fuel on board than that. Check the gauges again. If the last flight’s ending fuel is what’s wrong, have it corrected.
• “end_hobbs (…) must be greater than start_hobbs (…)”. Check the ending reading. The decimal point is added for you, so a missing digit makes it ten times too small.
• “end_fuel_gallons (…) can’t be greater than start_fuel_gallons (…)”. You entered more fuel at the end than at the start. If you fueled partway through, close the flight at the fuel stop and start a new one for the next leg.
• Start flight is refused for another reason. See Start flight was refused.