Release note 02/11/2026 - Unpublished bookings, multiple grading scales, aircraft model prerequisites and the notification center

Want the quick version? Watch the short videos under each feature below for a quick walkthrough of what’s new and how it works.

What’s new

1. Scheduling: Unpublished bookings — build your schedule in draft and publish it when it’s ready
2. Scheduling: Aircraft model prerequisites — decide which aircraft models a program, revision or session may be flown on
3. Scheduling: Buffer time — protected time for the walk-around, start-up and shut-down
4. Maintenance: Blocking and non-blocking maintenance types — critical items block, minor items warn
5. Grading: Multiple grading scales — grade each program on its own scale
6. Registrations: Instructors can set aside a blocking hold item list exercise for one session
7. Notifications: A new notification center — every change that concerns you, in one place

This release is about making FlightLogger work the way your school really operates. Schedulers plan in drafts, aircraft need time on the ground between flights, some sessions can only be flown on certain types, and not every overdue maintenance item is equally serious. Until now, much of that nuance had to be managed around the system rather than in it.

Unpublished bookings let your scheduling team build next week’s schedule in peace and publish it in one go — no half-finished changes reaching students, and no premature emails. Aircraft model prerequisites make sure every session is booked on the right aircraft, buffer time protects the walk-around and turnaround, and blocking maintenance types keep an aircraft on the ground only when it genuinely matters.

On the training side, multiple grading scales let one account grade each program to the standard it is trained to — ideal for schools training cadets for several airlines. Instructors get a recorded, transparent way past a hold item list exercise that simply cannot be flown in today’s session. And the new notification center brings booking changes, expiring certificates and sessions ready to sign together in one place, so nothing important gets lost in an inbox.

Most of this release is off by default or only takes effect once you configure it. A few changes are visible straight away — the unpublished booking controls for administrators, the grading scale field on programs and a new icon on maintenance types — and each is flagged with a visible change note below.

 

Unpublished bookings

 

You can now build your schedule as a draft, directly on the booking screen, and publish it when it is ready. It is one of the features our customers have asked for most.

Until now, every booking went live the moment it was saved. Students and instructors saw it immediately, emails went out, and the Conflict Center reacted while the scheduler was still moving things around. Schools that plan a day or a week at a time had two options: build the schedule outside FlightLogger, or let a stream of half-finished changes reach their students. Unpublished bookings keep work in progress with your scheduling team, so the schedule your students receive is the finished one.

Creating an unpublished booking

In the booking pop-up, click the new pen-and-paper icon next to the email envelope before you click Create. The booking is saved as unpublished, hidden from booking screens and live workflows until you publish it.

Unpublished bookings are drawn with diagonal stripes, so you can tell them apart from live bookings at a glance. In Day and Week view, the Show unpublished bookings / Hide unpublished bookings toggle in the toolbar switches them on and off, and your browser remembers your choice.

You can edit, move and delete unpublished bookings like any other booking, so you can rework the plan until it is right. They cannot be repeated, cancelled or approved, and an existing live booking cannot be turned into an unpublished one.

Who sees them

Only users with the new permission see unpublished bookings. Everyone else, students included, sees nothing, and no emails are sent while a booking is unpublished.

For users with the permission, unpublished bookings also appear in:

• Student overview — a session that only has an unpublished booking is striped, and hovering it shows "Unpublished booking" with the date.
• Student profile — session rows show "This session has an unpublished booking for [date]".
• List view and changelogs — a new toggle shows or hides unpublished bookings, exports follow it, and each changelog entry is tagged Unpublished or Published.

Publishing

Publish a single booking with Publish in its pop-up, or publish a whole day at once: in Day view, open the page lock, click the unpublished count in the day header and choose Publish all unpublished bookings (or Delete all unpublished bookings). The same options are available in the bulk action menu. Aircraft and classroom bookings are published separately, and only the bookings shown under your current filter are included. A results pane then shows what was published and why anything was skipped.

Publishing works exactly as if the booking were created live at that moment:

• Emails — participants receive the normal booking emails if "Notify via email" is on for the booking.
• Clashes and availability — these do not stop the publish. If an aircraft, classroom or person is already booked, outside their availability or on leave, the booking is Published with warning and the reasons are shown.
• Blocking rules — anything that blocks a live booking still blocks: missing details, the certificate and warning rules in your booking settings, instructor certificate prerequisites and aircraft model prerequisites. A student who already has the same session in a live booking, or has already flown it, cannot have it published again.

Because unpublished bookings are checked against live bookings and never against each other, you can sketch alternative plans side by side. Publishing is permanent: there is no unpublish.

New permission

Administration → User permissions → [role] → Bookings → "Can view, create, edit, or delete unpublished bookings"

Level	What it allows
None	Unpublished bookings are hidden
View	See and open unpublished bookings, read-only
Create+Edit	Create, edit and publish them
Create+Edit+Delete	Everything above, plus delete

Creating or publishing also requires at least Create+Edit on the existing "Can create, edit, cancel or delete bookings" permission, and deleting requires Create+Edit+Delete or All on it. The permission can also be set on groups and individual users, for example to give view-only access to people who should see the draft schedule without changing it.

Note — visible change for administrators

The Administrator role has been given Create+Edit+Delete, so administrators will see the new icon and toggles straight away. Staff with scheduling permissions have been given Create+Edit. Every other role starts at None and sees nothing until you raise it, typically to Create+Edit or Create+Edit+Delete for your scheduling team.

 

Aircraft model prerequisites

You can now decide which aircraft models a program, a program revision or a single flight session may be flown on, and FlightLogger stops bookings and flight registrations on any other model.

Type-specific syllabi, regulatory requirements and fleet policy often mean a session has to be flown on a particular aircraft: the multi-engine phase on the twin, type rating sessions on the type, instrument sessions in a specific simulator. Until now, enforcing that depended on your schedulers remembering it. Now the rule lives in the program itself and is applied to every booking and registration automatically.

Setting it up

Go to Administration → Programs and click the Requirements and prerequisites icon on the program. On the Prerequisites tab, a new Aircraft tab sits next to Hours, Sessions and Certificates. Use the tree on the left to choose the program, a revision or a flight session, tick the aircraft models it may be booked on, and click Update aircraft model prerequisites. Simulators are aircraft models too, so you can include or exclude them in exactly the same way.

The Aircraft tab is available on flight training and combined syllabus programs, and on flight sessions. Ground programs and ground sessions are not affected. Anyone who can view and edit programs can maintain the lists.

The most specific level applies

Unlike other prerequisites, aircraft model lists are not added together across levels. A session’s list replaces the revision’s, which in turn replaces the program’s. This gives you precise control: a session can allow a wider set of models than the program, or a completely different one, such as simulator sessions inside a program that is otherwise flown on aircraft. Where no list is set at any level, any aircraft can be used, exactly as today.

What the scheduler sees

If the selected aircraft is not an eligible model for the session, a red message appears under the aircraft field, "[aircraft]: not an eligible aircraft model for [session]", and the booking cannot be created or saved until another aircraft is chosen. A student booking without a specific session is checked against the student’s program instead.

Prefer not to see ineligible aircraft at all? A new setting under Administration → Account settings → Booking → Business rules, "Use aircraft model prerequisites as a booking filter (hide ineligible aircraft instead of blocking)", removes them from the aircraft selector. It is off by default and works independently of the aircraft model certificate filter released last month.

For recurring bookings, FlightLogger lists any bookings in the series whose session does not allow the selected aircraft before anything is saved. You can go back and change the aircraft or, if you are allowed to override booking conflicts, create the rest of the series without them.

Flight registrations

The same check protects your training records. If a flight is registered on an aircraft the session does not allow, the aircraft field is outlined in red with "The registered aircraft does not match the aircraft model prerequisite for this flight", and the registration cannot be submitted until the aircraft is corrected.

Note

Aircraft model prerequisites always block. Unlike session, hour and certificate prerequisites, there is no override request: the fix is to choose an eligible aircraft or update the list. Rentals, maintenance, operations and meetings are never checked. Existing bookings and flights are not re-checked when you change a list; a booking is checked again the next time it is edited and saved, or moved to another aircraft.

 

Buffer time on flight bookings

Flight bookings can now include protected time before and after the flight for the walk-out, walk-around, start-up and shut-down.

Until now, FlightLogger held the aircraft for the flight itself only. Many schools worked around this by booking flights 30 minutes longer than planned, or by moving the briefing earlier by hand on every booking. Buffer time replaces those workarounds with one school-wide setting, and makes tight turnarounds visible on the booking screen before they become a problem on the ramp.

Setting it up

Go to Administration → Account settings → Booking, tick Enable buffer time, and set Default buffer before flight and Default buffer after flight, for example 0:20 and 0:10. Every new flight booking gets these buffers automatically, and you can adjust them on a single booking whenever a session needs more or less time. Simulator bookings do not get a buffer.

On the booking screen

Buffer time is shown as a grey area next to the flight. During buffer time, the aircraft, instructor and student are all held. Between two flights on the same aircraft, the gap is the first flight’s buffer after plus the next flight’s buffer before.

If a booking cuts into another booking’s buffer on the same aircraft, it is flagged as a conflict, so tight turnarounds are spotted straight away.

Note

Buffer time is for scheduling only. It never counts as flight or block time, is never paid or billed, and never appears in expense or income reports. Flight registration still starts from the booked flight start time. Buffer time is off until you enable it, and existing bookings are not changed.

 

Blocking and non-blocking maintenance types

You can now decide, per maintenance type, whether an overdue item should stop an aircraft from flying or simply raise a warning.

Until now, the "Block if maintenance is missing, expired, or requiring approval" settings were all or nothing. Once switched on, every overdue item grounded the aircraft, and a minor cabin item counted the same as an overdue 100-hour inspection. In practice, that meant choosing between grounding aircraft over minor items or not using blocking at all. Now your critical items block while the minor ones warn, keeping aircraft available without compromising on what matters.

Setting it up

Go to Administration → Requirements → Create, open the Maintenance tab, and create or edit a maintenance requirement. A new Blocking maintenance checkbox sits alongside "Require upload of document" and "Require serial number". Untick it to make that maintenance type warning-only.

The setting belongs to the maintenance type, so it applies to every aircraft that uses it. Unlike the other options on the form, it can be changed at any time, including after the type has been assigned to aircraft. Changing it requires the manage level of the Maintenance access permission, which administrators have by default.

What happens when an item is overdue

• Blocking item — works exactly as today. The aircraft cannot be booked, registered or dispatched, depending on which blocking settings your account has switched on.
• Non-blocking item — the aircraft can still be booked, registered and dispatched. The warning is shown just as before, in Maintenance warnings, on the aircraft and in the Conflict Center, so nothing goes unnoticed.
• One of each overdue on the same aircraft — the aircraft is blocked.

Blocking types are marked with a ban icon wherever maintenance is shown: Maintenance warnings, the aircraft’s maintenance list, the requirement list and the maintenance type dropdowns. Hover the icon to see exactly what it blocks on your account, for example "This maintenance is blocking: Flight registration, creation of flight bookings and departure/arrival authorization".

Works with your existing blocking settings

Blocking maintenance only takes effect where blocking is switched on for your account. The three existing settings are unchanged:

• Bookings: Administration → Account settings → Booking → "Enable blocking of flight bookings" → "Block if maintenance is missing, expired, or requiring approval"
• Registrations: Administration → Account settings → General settings → Registrations → "Enable blocking of flight registrations" → the same option
• Departure and arrival: Administration → Account settings → General settings → Acknowledgement and authorization → "Enable warning popup when dispatching" → the same option

Note — visible change for every account

Every existing maintenance type was set to blocking on release, so the way your aircraft are blocked today does not change. You will, however, see the new ban icon next to your maintenance types straight away. To make a type warning-only, untick Blocking maintenance on it. If none of the blocking settings above are switched on, nothing blocks, whatever the type says.

 

Multiple grading scales

One account can now hold up to five grading scales, and each flight training or combined syllabus program is graded on the scale that fits it.

Until now, an account had a single grading scale for all of its training. Schools training cadets for several airlines, each with its own grading standard, had to grade everyone on the same scale or run a second FlightLogger account. Now every program can be graded to the exact standard it is trained to, all within one account.

Getting additional scales

Grading scales are set up for you by FlightLogger. Contact your customer success manager or our support team with the name of each scale and its grades, and we will add it to your account. This includes whether a scale is reversed ("1 is highest"), which is now set per scale, so a reversed scale and a standard one can sit side by side.

Choosing the scale for a program

When you create a flight training or combined syllabus program under Administration → Programs → Create, a new required Grading scale field lets you pick the scale by name. On existing programs, you will find the same field when you edit them.

The scale can be changed until the first student is enrolled on the program. From then on it is locked and shown read-only, so a student’s grades mean the same thing from their first session to their last. New revisions of the program keep its scale.

What instructors and students see

Instructors grading a session see only the grades from that program’s scale: in normal and custom sessions, in the progress tracker and in the CBTA norms of the session builder. Averages, best grades, hold items and subgrades are all calculated on the program’s scale, as are each student’s grade statistics and progress charts.

Reports, session PDFs and the pilot training record show the grade each session received, exactly as before.

Note — visible change for every account

On release, your current grades were placed in a scale called Default grading scale, and every existing flight training and combined syllabus program was assigned to it. Past sessions keep their grades, and nothing changes in how you grade today. The one difference you will notice is that the program form now asks for a grading scale. Ground training programs do not use a grading scale and are unaffected.

 

Instructors can set aside a blocking hold item list exercise

Instructors can now set aside a blocking hold item list exercise for a single session when it cannot be flown, with a clear record that it was skipped on purpose.

Max roll down, introduced in January, lets you require that a hold item list exercise is completed within a set number of sessions. On the last of those sessions, the exercise is marked must complete in this session, and the session cannot be submitted until it has been graded.

That works well until the exercise simply cannot be flown in that session: stalls on a solo flight, multi-engine work in a single-engine aircraft, an IFR exercise on a VFR session, or a simulator exercise on an aircraft session. Until now, the block stopped instructors from registering a session that was legitimately flown. If you allow it, instructors can now set the exercise aside for that one session, keeping registrations moving without weakening your training standard.

How it works

When the exercise is due in the session being registered, a red eye icon appears next to must complete in this session (complete now on mobile). Hovering it shows "Ignore this hold item list exercise". Click it, and the eye is crossed out and the text struck through; the session can then be submitted as long as everything else is in order. Click the eye again to undo.

The ignore covers one session only. On the next session the exercise is shown as must complete in this session again, and blocks until it is graded or set aside once more.

On the submitted session, the ignored exercise remains visible in the hold item list with the crossed-out eye. Hovering it reads "The instructor ignored this hold item exercise", so anyone reviewing the record can see it was skipped deliberately, not forgotten.

New setting

Administration → Account settings → General settings → Registrations → "Allow instructors to ignore the blocking hold item list exercise"

The option sits directly under "Block if a hold item list exercise is not completed within [n] sessions" and only appears when that block is switched on. It is off by default, so nothing changes until you enable it.

Note

Ignoring an exercise only lifts the max roll down block for that exercise, in that session. Missing grades and every other blocking rule still apply. The eye is available to anyone who can proceed with and change the flight registration: flight instructors on their own sessions, and administrators on any session. If the student has already approved the session, the "Can change sessions approved by students" permission is also required.

Never miss what changed: the new notification center

 

FlightLogger now has a built-in notification center that brings everything that concerns you together in one place.

Flight schools deal with constant change: bookings move, weather cancels flights and certificates run out. Until now, FlightLogger told you about these changes by email, and emails are easy to lose in a busy inbox. The notification center makes sure the right people see the right change, the moment it happens.

How it works

A bell in the top bar shows how many new notifications you have as soon as they arrive. Click it to see the latest, or open All notifications to see the last 90 days. Every notification links straight to what it is about: the booking, the certificate or the session.

What you are notified about

• Bookings — when you are scheduled, moved or cancelled, you see exactly what changed, for example "Now 14:00, was 10:00".
• Expiring certificates — using the warning periods your school has already set, so there is time to renew.
• Sessions ready to sign — students are notified as soon as their instructor submits the session.
• News from FlightLogger — release notes and service notices stay in your list, so you can find them again later.

Designed not to overwhelm

A booking moved three times in ten minutes shows up as one notification with the latest details. You are never notified about changes you made yourself, and unpublished bookings stay quiet until they are published. Choose the categories you want in Notification settings; your emails continue to work exactly as they do today.

What it means for your school: fewer missed bookings, fewer "did you see the change?" phone calls, certificates renewed on time and sessions signed faster.

 

Additional improvements

Alongside these features, this release includes a number of smaller refinements and fixes. As always, if anything here does not behave the way you expect on your account, please get in touch with support and we will take a look.

Best regards,

Team FlightLogger