Vessels, Oil Rigs, Aircraft Carriers

If you operate to vessels, aircraft carriers, or oil rigs, the location of these platforms may change over time. This solution article explains how to deal with this.

Airfields

CrewLounge PILOTLOG stores vessels, aircraft carriers and oil rigs as Airfield records in the database.

CrewLounge PILOTLOG comes default with a 40,000 airfields database, including major airfields, military air force bases, ultra-light landing strips, water ports, hospital roofs, etc. There are also 1,500 special airfields, such as safari lodges, oil rigs and military aircraft carriers.

When needed, you can create User Airfields, such as your private yard.  It is recommend to use the codes "ZZZZ" or "Q ..." for the ICAO code.  All other characters (A-Z, except Q) are assigned to a specific country or region.

Changing Location

When you record a flight from A to B, the coordinates of airfields A and B serve for the following background functions:

• calculate night time (take-off and landing)
• calculate local hours (UTC, daylight savings time, etc)
• calculate distance (used in various reports)
• display the route on maps

Say the following scenario:

A is your home base with a fixed location, B is a vessel with a changing location

1.   September - you log a flight from A to B
2.   October - you change the coordinates for B in the airfield database 
3.   November - you log a flight from A to B

When you change the vessel's coordinates, the impact on the flight that you logged in September is limited:

• night time, take-off and landing that you logged in September, do not change (*)
• local hours that you logged in September do not change, even if the vessel's new location would be in a different time zone (*)
• distance from A to B will change (as the distance is not stored in the database, but calculated using the current location of B)
• the flight from A to B is incorrectly displayed on maps (because maps use the current location of B)

(*) the data will not change unless you edit and save the flight record again!  When you modify the record, this uses the new location of the vessel and thus change the numbers.  This would also happen if the flight record is updated automatically by the airline interface historical data import!

Solution

1. Average Position

You must never use the CrewLounge AERO apps for navigation purposes. With that in mind, you can choose not to update the Airfield record every time the vessel's location changes. Instead, insert an average position for the area of operation.

2. New Airfield record

Another option is to create an airfield record for each new location of the vessel. Keep in mind that the IATA code and the ICAO code cannot be reused.

Back to the same scenario:

Given B is a vessel with a changing location.  The airfield record has the following properties:

ICAO = "Q001"
Name = "Vessel Marshmallow"

You would the do the following actions:

1.   September - you book a flight from A to B ("Q001")
2.   October - you rename airfield record B from "Q001 | Vessel Marshmallow" into "Q001 | Vessel Marshmallow - September 2023", and you create a new record "Q002 | Vessel Marshmallow - October 2023" with the new coordinates
3.   November - you book a flight from A to B ("Q002") 

With this solution, you basically have a new airfield record for any new location of the vessel.  The advantage of solution 2 is that there are no changes to the flight that you recorded for September.  The disadvantage of solution 2 is the extra work and the duplicate records in your airfield database.