Release Notes v10.7

On Wednesday 12 September we will be releasing the following enhancements:

Change to the rule that determines the Original Operator
400+ new terms added to the Glossary
Name changes to the tabs in the Saved Search section
OEM name changes

Change to the rule that determines the Original Operator

The rule that determines the Original Operator for an aircraft has been changed:

Old rule: Original Operator is the company that had the role of Operator at the time of the first event in an aircraft’s history
New rule: Original Operator is the company that had the role of Operator at the time of the first delivery event in an aircraft’s history

Why are we making this change?

Firstly, it’s important to understand that, in Flight Fleets Analyzer, ‘Operator’ is not a type of company; it’s a role that a company has. For example, an airline can have multiple roles, such as Operator, Manager, etc.

Secondly, the roles of Owner, Manager and Operator are mandatory fields in the Flight Fleets Analyzer database. They have to be applied to all aircraft events – even events that occur prior to the aircraft being delivered, or even built.

When we first learn of an aircraft order, we would typically know who the owner is, but might not know the manager or operator. So the Owner, Manager and Operator fields would typically be populated with the owner. The old rule for Original Operator often identified the owner as being the Original Operator, and often this was a lessor. The new rule will now identify the Original Operator as being the Operator at the time of the delivery event.

There is no rule in place that excludes any specific Company Category – such as Finance & Professional – from having the role of Operator, so there will still be some cases where a company such as a lessor could appear as the Original Operator, although this new rule greatly reduces those occurrences (for the commercial fleet, over the last 20 years, companies categorised as Finance & Professional will be identified as the Original Operator in 0.5% of cases; over the same period, airlines account for 97.8% of cases).

400+ new terms added to the Glossary

This release includes our largest single update to the contents of the Glossary, with definitions for all our aircraft events now being included.

Figure 1: New aircraft events’ definitions added to the Glossary

Name changes to the tabs in the Saved Search section

Ahead of some major upcoming changes related to Saved Searches, we’ve changed the language used to categorise Saved Searches. These are shown in the images below:

Figure 2: The previous tab names

Figure 3: The new tab names

OEM name changes

The OEM name changes announced on 7 August will be implemented during this release (see original announcement).