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Importing aircraft

This page is part of Aircraft. It covers bringing an existing fleet in without retyping it.

Importing FAA registration certificates#

Each FAA registration comes with a certificate PDF you download from FAADroneZone. Give RotorLab those PDFs and it reads them, shows you what it read, and brings each into the register once you have checked it. RotorLab never signs in to DroneZone: it reads only the files you give it. Importing needs an organization admin or a role with Aircraft & registry: manage, and the Fleet Manager add-on.

What a certificate gives#

RotorLab reads the Certificate holder, the Registration number (the FA-number) and the Issued and Expires dates on every certificate, and on a certificate of one aircraft (the Part 107 kind, registered per aircraft) the Manufacturer, Model and Serial number. It reads each value by the label printed beside it, and the layout of current certificates is not confirmed, so a field it could not read is left blank for you to enter from the certificate. A value found in the text with no label beside it is marked so you check it. A scanned or encrypted certificate holds no text RotorLab can read; its fields are yours to enter. Nothing is written until you have reviewed it and applied it.

Many at once, from the Aircraft page#

  1. Press More ways on the Aircraft page, choose Import registration certificates, then Choose certificate PDFs. Choose up to 50 at once, each up to 8 MB.
  2. Each certificate gets a card with its file name, what was read and, under Not read, for you to enter, what was not. A file that could not be read says why.
  3. Under Bring it in as, RotorLab suggests the aircraft in your organization with the same registration or the same serial (Update the aircraft, with the reason), or Register a new aircraft when none matches. You can pick Another aircraft instead, or Skip this certificate. A new aircraft takes an Aircraft name, suggested from the model and the last four characters of the serial, and its Serial: a drone with standard Remote ID broadcasts its own serial, usually the one on the certificate; with a broadcast module, enter the aircraft's own.
  4. Check each value in the table against the certificate and correct it if needed. Write it says which values are written to the aircraft: the registration's own facts (number, holder, issued, expires) are ticked; the model and the Remote ID serial are ticked only where the aircraft has none or the same. Where the aircraft already holds a different value, the line under the box says what it holds; for the Remote ID serial it says to check which is right, since the registration must carry the serial the aircraft broadcasts.
  5. Press Apply. The line at the foot of the sheet counts the certificates first, for example "4 certificates: 1 read in full, 1 with fields left for you (...), 2 not readable (...)", with those that need you listed first, and after Apply what was applied, what was not and why, and what was skipped. Each applied card links to its aircraft.

Registering a new aircraft from a certificate uses a Fleet Manager slot, as registering one by hand does.

One at a time, on an aircraft's page#

The Registration certificate section of an aircraft's Registration and documents tab shows the certificate kept with it: Registration number, Certificate holder, Issued, Expires and Serial it prints, each "not recorded" when blank. Under them a line compares the serial: the Remote ID serial on the record is the serial the certificate prints; the certificate prints a serial and the record holds no Remote ID serial to check; or, in amber, the two differ, with a note that a changed serial is updated on the registration within 14 days (14 CFR 48.115). The kept PDF is linked with its size and SHA-256.

Press Upload the certificate (or Upload a newer certificate) and choose the PDF. The review shows what was read and what was not; when the certificate's registration or serial is also on another aircraft, it names that aircraft and asks you to check this is the right one. Untick what should not be written, then apply it. The status line on the card says what is happening and the outcome.

What is kept#

An applied certificate's PDF is kept with the aircraft, with its SHA-256 fingerprint, and the certificate's expiry, when written, becomes the aircraft's Registration expires, so Registrations to renew reads from it. The holder, the issue date and the serial it prints are kept on the aircraft record and print on its PDF. Each import is written to the activity log.

Importing an existing fleet#

Import from a spreadsheet, in the menu beside Register an aircraft (the sheet it opens is titled Import from CSV), brings an operation in from a spreadsheet instead of an afternoon of retyping: aircraft, components with the hours already on them, and crew invites. Under What, pick Aircraft, Components (parts with hours) or People (crew invites), download the matching template (the selector beside it gives the template comma- or semicolon-separated, to suit your spreadsheet), then choose a file or paste rows straight from your spreadsheet.

Preview shows every row with exactly what importing will do: create, skip (with the reason), or refused (with the reason and the line number). Nothing is written until you press Import, and the import executes exactly the plan the preview showed. Existing records always win: an aircraft matching by serial or name is skipped rather than overwritten, a component name an aircraft already tracks is skipped, and an email that is already a member is skipped, so importing the same file twice is safe. A bad row refuses alone; the rows around it still import.

Component rows may carry hours_to_date and cycles_to_date: life the part flew before RotorLab, banked so its limits count down from the truth rather than from zero. People rows send the standard invitation email, as Invite a member does on the Organization page; when the email cannot be sent, the person stays Invited and you press Resend invitation on the Members list later. No invitation link is shown.

How the file is read#

Numbers are read strictly. A point is the decimal separator (1.5 hours), with no thousands separator, and a number with a comma is refused on its row rather than guessed at. If your spreadsheet writes a decimal comma (1,5 hours), tick This file uses a decimal comma and a comma is the decimal separator instead.

A file separated by semicolons or tabs is read as such, an Excel sep=; first line is honored, a UTF-8 byte-order mark at the start of the file is ignored, and a cell written with a leading apostrophe to keep a spreadsheet from running it (the way RotorLab's own exports write one) is read as the value behind the apostrophe, so the aircraft.csv from an organization data export imports as it came out.

The preview shows each component's hours, cycles and limits as they will be written, so a misread number is caught before you press Import. Hours run from 0 to 100,000, cycles and flight limits are whole numbers, and a months limit is at most 1,200. An aircraft row's airframe_type has to be one of the airframe types the Builder knows; any other value is refused on its row.