AirData's Checklist Alerts Keep You Informed

by Trevor Hall • March 31, 2021

Communication between pilots is now even easier with checklist alerts. Recipients of AirData's email alerts are notified instantly when specific answers are chosen on a checklist. This is excellent for relaying pertinent information (equipment should be grounded, an incident occurred, etc.) in a real-time manner.

How AirData's email alerts work - an overview

One of our main goals here at AirData is to help you manage your fleet efficiently. Being educated about what your pilots are up to and the operational status of your equipment can be a time-consuming task, albeit a very important one.

Fortunately, AirData's email alerts allow you to be well informed about day-to-day operations without requiring you to do so much as log in to your AirData account.

Types of email alerts

Not including our brand new checklist alerts, AirData provides the following alerts, which are currently used by thousands of customers:

  • Equipment
  • Pilot behavior
  • Maintenance

With equipment alerts, you can be notified when the battery exceeds a preset temperature or when there are deviations between the individual cells of the battery.

Pilot behavior alerts keep you in the loop about the actions of your pilots. Get notified if they are flying BVLOS, taking off and landing with unsafe battery levels, exceeding certain altitudes, or if they are not flying regularly.

Drone and battery maintenance is an integral part of any successful drone operation. Because AirData automatically tracks drone and battery metrics such as air time, charge count, and flights, we can automatically notify you when it's time to complete maintenance.

To set up one of the above alerts, head to the "MANAGE ->"ALERTS" tabs in your AirData dashboard and click on "Add Alert" in the top left-hand corner.

Here is a how-to video on some of the best practices when configuring your alerts.

NEW! Introducing checklist alerts

Our highly customizable pre and post-flight checklists have had some significant upgrades in the recent weeks - you can now create multiple checklists and assign a checklist to a flight group!

While making these key updates, we added a question type to the list - which, when chosen, enables you to receive an email alert when the checklist is saved.

How to set up a checklist alert

  1. To set up this new checklist alert, navigate to "MANAGE" -> "CHECKLISTS," and select a pre or post-flight checklist. Click on the "Add Question" button at the bottom and select the question type labeled "Select & Alert: Email alerts if selected."


  2. Provide a question in the box titled "Question:" - this will be the question that the pilot reads when they are completing the checklist. An example question could be "Should this aircraft be grounded?"


  3. In the "Option name" box, provide an answer to the question you asked in the previous step. Going with our example question of "Should this aircraft be grounded?" we should provide the pilot with a "yes" option and a "no" option. It would be wise to set the "no" option as "Default" and mark the "Email alert if this option is chosen" box for the "yes" option, as seen below.


  4. For "Explanation Question to include in the email alert:," we could say, "Why should this aircraft be grounded?", which will provide the pilot with a textbox in which they can provide their reasoning. The pilot's answer will be displayed in the email sent to the recipient.


  5. Add as many emails as necessary under "Recipients".


  6. Although not a requirement - in the "Description:" box, feel free to add further clarification about this question for the pilot.

Examples of when to use checklists alerts

As you can see from the above example, it would be very helpful for an operational manager to be immediately notified when an event occured that would warrant an aircraft's grounding. So, when are some other times you might want to use our brand new checklist alert feature? Here are a few example questions...

  • Will this flight be conducted in controlled airspace? (pre-flight)
  • Is the air temperature below 32 degrees Fahrenheit? (pre-flight)
  • Should this aircraft be grounded? (post-flight)
  • Did you notice any unusual behavior with the equipment used? (post-flight)
  • Did you receive any warnings in the flight app? (post-flight)

The above list is by no means all-inclusive. Now that you understand the importance of checklists alerts and how to set them up, we encourage you to spend a little time seeing how they can improve your operations!

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