Eyrix — Blog
Crew type-ratings and rostering: matching the right crew to the right tail
A crew member isn't interchangeable across a fleet. A type-rating qualifies a pilot to operate a specific aircraft type, and that rating has to be current — recency requirements, licence and medical validity, line checks. Rostering is the job of matching each flight to a crew who is both qualified and legal to fly it on the day. When qualification lives in one planner's head, it becomes the constraint that quietly shrinks the roster.
Qualification is a moving target, not a static list
A type-rating isn't a permanent badge. It lapses without recent experience; it's suspended when a medical or licence check falls due; recency is counted per type, so a pilot rated on two types has to stay current on both. The question a roster has to answer isn't "is this crew rated on this type?" but "is this crew rated, current and legal to operate this aircraft on this date?" — and the answer changes week to week.
The two ways it goes wrong
Over-assignment. A planner working from memory pairs a crew with a tail they're no longer current on. The roster looks complete; the pairing is invalid, and it surfaces at the gate — the most expensive place to find it.
Under-assignment. The subtler, more common loss. Unsure who may legally step in, a planner rosters a tail light or leans on the same few "safe" names — while a qualified crew member was in fact available. The capacity existed; the uncertainty wasted it. This is one of the gaps that quietly erode utilisation: the constraint is real, but the roster is tighter than the rules actually require.
Qualification and tail assignment are one problem
Crew rostering can't be solved after the fleet is planned, because the two constrain each other. Assigning a tail to a leg fixes which type-rating the crew must hold; closing the aircraft rotation fixes where the crew has to be and when. Plan tails first and crew second and you get rotations no qualified crew can legally close; plan crew first and you get qualified people with no feasible aircraft. The right tail and the right crew are two halves of one assignment.
What crew rostering software checks
Software that only stores who flew what is a record, not a roster. A rostering engine holds each crew's ratings, recency and validity as live data and checks, on every assignment, that the crew is qualified and current for that tail on that date — before the pairing is committed, not after. Layered on top of the FTL rest and duty limits and the aircraft rotation, that turns qualification from a source of last-minute surprises into a constraint the roster respects by construction — and, just as importantly, stops it from shrinking the roster further than the rules do.