There are, unfortunately, quite a few situations that can cause a work order to get stuck and this can be a little frustrating at times, however it is all part of the existence of a charter company or airlines in general.

Here are some situations that can arise and information on what you may need to do to resolve or avoid them:

No Fuel available at the departure airport –
Sometimes your aircraft will find itself
stranded without enough fuel to proceed
with the next leg in the work order. This
cannot always be avoided (someone may
just have purchased all the fuel before
you!) but a little forward planning
can minimise the risks. When planning
a leg, a small ‘FBO’ button is shown to
the right of the destination. Pressing this
button will give details of fuel reserves, prices and workshops available at the destination airport.

By checking ahead to see if there is plenty of fuel, you may be able to spot times where you should carry extra fuel on the previous leg and then utilise the ‘Don’t Load fuel’ option when departing from the airport with a shortage or complete lack of fuel services.

Diverted due to bad weather – Sadly, nobody has control over the weather, and your employees will be forced to deal with situations sometimes when the weather at an airport is just too dangerous to attempt a landing. When this happens, they will instead travel to the ‘Alternate’ airport and the work order will be paused until you can give them new instructions. These weather diversions are based on the real world METAR weather reports that airports generate, but if the airport does not have its own METAR reporting, then the next nearest airport that does will be used for weather information instead.

You can check the METAR data at airports in advance by using the World Menu → Airports option and checking the information for your destination airports. This can help forewarn you if, if your aircraft is likely to fly into bad weather areas.

Diverted due to mechanical issue – Aircraft are machines and like all machines, they will sometimes develop faults or break down. When this happens, your employees will attempt to land the aircraft at the nearest valid airport, sometimes returning to their point of departure if it’s close enough.

Much like a bad weather scenario, these diversions will pause the work order until you can personally intervene and retask any payloads or have the aircraft repaired.

You can minimise the chance of these things occuring though, both by ensuring your aircraft have been kept well maintained and in good condition and by ensuring you have higher skilled pilots as they are less likely to damage or overstress the aircraft during routine flights and create an emergency situation.

Employee not available – This can occur if an employee is currently still busy with a task, not at the correct airport or has gone to sleep since their work shift is over. It may also occur if you try to assign employees to a plane they are not qualified to operate on.

Try to ensure that all employees will be available for duty and are correctly qualified before assigning them to a work order.

Payload not available – This sometimes comes up when a payload is listed as ‘re‐quired’ in the payload list, but it is not present at the point the leg is processed.

Try to ensure that only payloads required for the workorder have a required check mark and avoid cancelling jobs that are part of an existing work order.