Flight currency and recency rules

Flight currency asks one question: has this pilot flown enough of this kind of aircraft, recently enough, to fly it today? echoMike answers it as a rolling total of hours in a window, assessed separately for each group of aircraft your organisation treats as equivalent.

How currency is computed

The assessment runs per pilot, per aircraft equivalence group.

echoMike takes the assessment date and steps back a whole number of calendar months — the Lookback months setting — to find the start of the window. It then adds up the duration of every flight that pilot flew on aircraft in that group, inside that window, and compares the total against Required flight hours.

Four rules decide what actually counts:

• The flight must be approved. A flight still pending review adds to a separate pending figure and contributes nothing to the qualifying total.
• The aircraft must be in an equivalence group. An airframe that belongs to no group cannot contribute to anyone’s currency, whatever the flight record says.
• Each flight expires on its own clock. A flight drops out of the window on the anniversary of its own date, not all at once at the end of a period.
• Attested credits count while they last. A manager-issued credit adds to the qualifying total until it expires or is revoked.

That last rule is what makes Expiring soon meaningful. echoMike looks ahead by Warning lead days and asks whether the flights due to expire in that stretch will drop the pilot below the requirement. If they will, the pilot is warned before they fall short rather than after.

The status a pilot can hold

Status	What it means
Current	Qualifying hours meet the requirement.
Expiring soon	Currently met, but expiring flights bring the pilot below the requirement inside the warning window.
Below requirement	There is flight evidence, but not enough of it.
No evidence	No qualifying and no pending flights in the window at all.
Needs classification	Flights exist but their aircraft is not in an equivalence group.
Not assessed	Currency monitoring is switched off for the organisation.

Where a pilot sees their own status

The Flight logbook carries a band with a tile per currency group. Currency details opens the full picture — Rolling flight time is assessed independently for each equivalent UAS group. Each group card shows hours logged against hours required, pills for any attested or pending contributions, and the Window it was measured over.

Managers see the same for their pilots, and the home workbench raises anyone who needs attention.

On a job, a Flight currency panel assesses the assigned pilot against the assigned drone. Before both are assigned it reads No pilot–aircraft assessment yet with Assign a pilot and drone to this job to assess currency.

The readiness check

PDRA01_PILOT_CURRENCY_CURRENT reads this assessment for each pilot on the job. It reports one of four things, and they are not equally serious:

• Sam Okafor’s flight currency is current — met.
• Sam Okafor’s flight currency expires soon — a warning, not a stop.
• Sam Okafor does not have sufficient recent flight time — a blocker. This is the only currency outcome that blocks a flight clearance.
• Sam Okafor’s flight currency has not been assessed — asks a reviewer to confirm, rather than blocking.

Configuring the rules

The rules live at /organization/flight-currency-rules. It is not in the sidebar — reach it from Configure on the Flight currency rules row in organisation settings, or from Open currency rules in the currency overview. Editing needs the Manage org settings permission; without it you see You need the Manage org settings permission to edit flight currency rules.

Recency policy holds four numbers and a switch:

Setting	What it controls	Default
Required flight hours	Hours needed inside the window for a pilot to be current.	2
Lookback months	How far back the rolling window reaches. 1 to 24.	3
Warning lead days	How far ahead to look when deciding Expiring soon. 0 to 365.	30
Timezone	The zone the calendar-month window is calculated in.	Europe/London
Assess pilot currency using these rules	The master switch. Off means every pilot reads Not assessed.	On

There is no minimum number of flights — the requirement is hours only.

Aircraft equivalence groups is the second half, and nothing works without it. Add a group by name, such as Survey multirotors, then assign each aircraft to it from its Equipment record — Manage aircraft takes you there. A group you no longer use can be set Archived rather than deleted.

Attested credits

A manager holding the Manage flight logs permission can add an attested currency credit to bridge onboarding, from the flight logbook’s overflow menu. Credits are shown separately from logged flight evidence under Attested credits, carry Active, Expired or Revoked, and can be revoked at any time — The credit stops counting immediately. Its provenance remains in the audit history.