Maintenance Schedules

Overview

Maintenance schedules are the backbone of a safe, well-run flying club. Aircraft are complex machines with regulatory requirements — annuals, 100-hour inspections, oil changes, and more — and keeping track of all of them across a shared fleet without a system is error-prone and risky. A missed annual doesn't just ground an aircraft; it can void insurance coverage and make every flight logged on an unairworthy aircraft a liability.

Proactive maintenance scheduling also saves money. Catching a problem during a scheduled inspection — when a mechanic is already under the cowling — is dramatically cheaper than an unscheduled teardown caused by a failure in the field. Centerline's maintenance schedules let your maintenance team stay ahead of the work rather than reacting to it. Members benefit too: they can see what's coming due and plan accordingly, avoiding the frustration of booking a cross-country flight only to find the aircraft unavailable when an inspection due date arrives.

Viewing Maintenance Schedules

Click Maintenance in the navigation bar to see all scheduled maintenance. You can filter by aircraft using the dropdown near the top of the list. Each schedule item shows:

Aircraft — The tail number and type the schedule belongs to
Name — A short label for the item (e.g., "Annual Inspection", "Oil Change")
Type — Either Due Date or Recurring (see below)
Last Completed — The date (and tach time, if tracked) when the item was last done
Next Due — When the item is due again, calculated from the last completion
Progress — A visual bar showing how much time or tach time remains

Schedule Types

Centerline supports two types of maintenance schedules, matching the two most common ways aviation maintenance is tracked:

Due Date — A one-time or hard-calendar item due on a specific date. Use this for items like a known avionics repair appointment, an upcoming IFR certification, or a squawk-driven inspection with a fixed deadline. The due date is set directly — there is no recurring interval.

Recurring — Items that repeat on a calendar interval, a tach-hour interval, or both. Use this for annuals (12 months), 100-hour inspections (100 tach hours), oil changes (50 hours or 4 months, whichever comes first), VOR checks (30 days), and similar. When both a month interval and a tach interval are set, the schedule tracks both and shows progress bars for each — the item is due when either threshold is reached.

Progress Indicators

The progress bar fills from left (just completed) to right (due soon) as the aircraft approaches the next maintenance event:

Green — Plenty of time or hours remaining
Amber — Approaching due date; within 30 days or within the final 10% of the tach interval
Red — Overdue; the due date has passed or the tach interval has been exceeded

When a schedule shows amber or red, plan maintenance soon. An overdue schedule doesn't automatically ground the aircraft in Centerline, but it signals that the item needs attention and your maintenance coordinator should be notified.

Tach Time Tracking

For recurring tach-based schedules, Centerline calculates progress using the aircraft's current tach time compared to the tach time at last completion. Both the current tach time and the average daily usage for the selected aircraft are shown above the schedule list.

Current tach time can be typed in and saved by members with the Maintenance role. In clubs with flight time logging enabled it is also kept current automatically as pilots finish flights.

Average daily usage is calculated for you. Every night, Centerline recalculates it for each active aircraft from the last 60 days of flight logs, so it is read-only on the maintenance page. If there have been no flights in that window it shows as zero, and an aircraft that has never had a flight log shows Not yet calculated. This figure is what projects a tach-based item's anticipated due date in the Maintenance Report and the Maintenance Digest, so it is deliberately based on real flying rather than a typed estimate.

The refresh icon beside the tach field runs the same calculation immediately, updating both the current tach time and the average daily usage from flight logs, for when you've just corrected a log and don't want to wait for the nightly run.

Sorting the List

Click a column header — Aircraft, Name, or Next Due — to sort the schedule by that column. Click the same header again to reverse the direction; an arrow in the header shows which column is active and which way it's sorted. Sorting by Next Due is the fastest way to bring whatever needs attention soonest to the top.

Sorting is a temporary view on top of the list's saved order. A reset button in the header returns the table to your manual (drag-and-drop) arrangement whenever you want it back.

Filtering by Aircraft

Use the aircraft dropdown above the schedule list to show maintenance items for a single aircraft. This is particularly useful when preparing an aircraft for a specific trip or coordinating with a shop before an appointment.

Maintenance Blocks on the Calendar

When maintenance is scheduled (using the separate Scheduled Maintenance feature on the calendar), it appears as a red block that prevents reservations during that period. Maintenance schedules tracked here are separate — they track recurring due dates but do not automatically block the calendar. Your maintenance coordinator needs to create a calendar maintenance block when the aircraft will actually be taken out of service for work.

Managing Maintenance Schedules

Members with the Maintenance role can:

Add new maintenance schedule items using the Add Schedule button
Edit an existing item to update the name, type, interval, or last-completed date and tach
Mark an item as completed by setting the completed date (and tach, if applicable)
Delete schedule items that are no longer relevant
Drag and drop items to reorder them within the list
Update the aircraft's current tach time directly from the maintenance page
Refresh tach time and average daily usage from flight logs (when flight time tracking is enabled)

Maintenance Digest Email

Rather than relying on someone remembering to open this page, your club can have each aircraft's maintenance status emailed on a schedule — every week, month, or quarter, on a weekday of the account owner's choosing. The email lists overdue and due-soon items with their anticipated dates, the current tach and average daily usage, open squawks, and maintenance blocks in the next 30 days, and links back to this page with the aircraft preselected.

The digest goes to the members listed as that aircraft's contacts, not to every member, and each contact can mute it per aircraft from Profile → Notifications → Aircraft Alerts. Account owners set it up under Setup → Data & Features; see Maintenance Digest. Maintenance officers and account owners can also open the same information on demand as the Maintenance Report.

Tips

Set up schedules for every recurring maintenance item when you onboard an aircraft. An incomplete list gives a false sense of confidence.
When maintenance is completed, update the Last Completed date (and tach) promptly. Stale completion data makes the progress bars meaningless.
For items tracked by both calendar and tach (like many oil changes), set both the month interval and the tach interval on a single recurring schedule. Centerline will show progress bars for each and the item is effectively due when either is reached.
Check maintenance status before booking long trips. An amber or red item doesn't prevent booking, but it's a signal worth discussing with your maintenance coordinator before you commit to a 500-mile flight.
In clubs that log every flight, let the flight logs drive the tach data. Average daily usage is recalculated nightly, and the refresh icon updates both figures on demand — fewer typed numbers means fewer data entry errors.
If you are responsible for an aircraft, ask your account owner to list you as one of its contacts and turn on the Maintenance Digest. You'll get this page's status in your inbox on a schedule instead of having to remember to check.