Flight Logs

Every flight writes itself down when it lands. Flight Logs is where you read them back: what the boards looked like, how long each gate actually took, what was decided, and what the crew thought of the meeting.

What a log holds#

Date and duration

When the flight ran and how long it took, end to end.

Gate timings

Time spent at each gate, accumulated across every visit. This is the number that tells you your five-minute scorecard is really taking eighteen.

The boards

The scorecard, rocks, to-dos, issues and announcements as they stood when the flight ended.

Notes

Anything the crew typed into a gate during the meeting.

Rating

The score out of ten, and the comments people left with it.

Items the crew closed out in an earlier flight are trimmed from a later log: each flight's record holds what that flight actually dealt with, not a running total of everything that has ever been on the board.

Using them#

• Catching up. Someone who missed the meeting reads the log instead of asking three people what happened.
• Fixing the agenda. Six weeks of gate timings tell you exactly which gate to take minutes off. See The agenda.
• Watching the score. A crew whose ratings drift down over a quarter has a problem, and the ratings are usually the first place it shows.