Registering aircraft and slots

This page is part of Aircraft. It covers adding an airframe to the register and the slot it uses.

Registering an aircraft#

Press Register an aircraft at the top of the page. The sheet folds two groups, Remote ID and FCC IDs (the Remote ID serial, how it broadcasts and the FCC labels) and Acquisition, value and funding (in service since, hull value, cost, contract and funding); open a group to fill its fields. The fields, group by group:

Name, identity and model#

• Name: required, unique within your organization, up to 80 characters. This is the name flights attach by.
• Registration: the tail number or registration mark, as your regulator issued it. The placeholder gives an example only under the United States regime (N123AB).
• Serial: the airframe serial. Once the aircraft has flown, the serial is no longer edited: a replacement airframe is an Exchange airframe from the edit dialog, which retires this record and starts its successor with the lineage kept (see Maintenance).
• In service since: the day the airframe entered service (its activation date). Calendar maintenance intervals not yet completed run from it.
• Model from the catalog: optional, a list of production aircraft by maker and family. Choosing one fills Model with the maker and model (for example "DJI Matrice 350 RTK") and sets Airframe to its airframe type. Under the list, as help only, the dialog shows the maker's published takeoff weight and what that weight means: the FAA weight line it falls on (under 250 g, 250 g to 55 lb, or over 55 lb), the DoD group and the NATO class. Nothing in the help is saved; record the figures you need in their own fields, such as Max take-off mass (g). Choose Not from the catalog for anything else.
• Model: for example Freefly Alta X. Type any model the catalog does not hold. Aircraft of the same model are compared against each other on the Fleet Health page.

Remote ID#

The Remote ID fields record what the aircraft broadcasts:

• Remote ID: the aircraft's own serial for a standard Remote ID aircraft, or the broadcast module's serial. Optional; recorded so you can produce it on request without reading it off the airframe. RotorLab never checks it and never requires it to fly or to file. Saving an aircraft whose Remote ID serial or registration is already recorded on another aircraft in service tells you so (case and punctuation are ignored, and retired aircraft are left out); it saves anyway.
• Under the United States regime, and no other, three more fields (Over people is left out for a public aircraft organization):
  • Remote ID means: Standard Remote ID aircraft (89.110), Remote ID broadcast module (89.115(a)), or Flown only inside an FAA-recognized identification area (89.115(b)). For an aircraft recorded as flown only inside an identification area, each filed flight's page reads its recorded position against the FAA's list of recognized areas: inside, it names the area and says that 14 CFR 89.115(b) needs both the aircraft and the person at the controls inside it for the whole flight, and that only the recorded position was read; outside every area, or inside one outside its recognized dates, it shows a finding saying so. A recorded position is not a clearance, and RotorLab neither recognizes an area nor decides whether an aircraft needs Remote ID.
  • Registration updated: the day the FAA registration was updated with the current Remote ID serial. A changed Remote ID serial means updating the registration within 14 calendar days (14 CFR 48.115; the serial is 48.110 information). The register reminds you after a change, and after 14 days says the update is overdue and by how many days, until you enter a Registration updated date on or after the change. The date cannot be in the future. An aircraft whose Registered with names the FAA shows the reminder under any regime, and its edit dialog offers Registration updated while the reminder shows.
  • Over people: the category the aircraft may fly over people in, Category 1 (107.110) to Category 4 (107.140), with its declaration of compliance or airworthiness certificate reference. It is what you state; RotorLab does not check it.

Class, group and home station#

These fields hold the classifications some regimes and programs ask for:

• Class marking: offered when any regime your organization operates in marks airframes, and listing every one of those regimes' marks in its own words: UK0 to UK6 and the EU C-marks accepted as the UK class to 31 December 2027, or C0 to C6. Each list ends with the truthful answer for an aircraft that lawfully has no mark: No class mark (legacy or privately built) for the United Kingdom, Legacy: no class label (on the market before 1 Jan 2024, Art 20) and Privately built: no class label for the EU. Any of those counts as recorded on the Retention page's completeness check; only a blank is a gap.
• UAS group: the DoD size classification, where a program asks for it; see What class an airframe falls into.
• Home station: shown only when your organization's How you fly in the United States is Public aircraft and military operations. The aircraft's home station, up to 80 characters on one line, printed as block 5 STATION on the DA Form 2408-12 entries. An airframe exchange carries it to the replacement.

Type, build and pack#

These fields tie the aircraft to a design and a pack:

• Type: which of your types, or a linked manufacturer's type, this aircraft is. Assigning makes it a serial of the type: its bulletins in effect are raised on the aircraft as work orders, unless the aircraft already answered them, and its flights count toward conformity. An aircraft with no max take-off mass takes the type's all-up mass at freeze. See Types and Directives.
• Build: link the aircraft to a saved build from your library, so one design can back many airframes. Linking fixes the version the build is at that moment: the aircraft's measured figures are compared with that version, and saving the build again later does not move it (see Measured vs predicted). Choose (none) to unlink. An aircraft linked to a build that is not in your own library shows The build it is linked to now (kept as it is), so saving another field keeps the link and its version. To compare with a newer version for good, unlink and link the build again.
• Default cell count: optional, the cells in series of the pack this aircraft usually flies, a whole number from 1 to 400. A flight that names no pack takes its per-cell battery figures from it, and each figure that does says so (for example "at the aircraft default of 6S"). Left blank, linking a build fills it from the build's flight pack, when you can see that build. A flight that names a pack always uses the pack's own cell count.
• Status: Active, In maintenance, or Retired.

Mass, endurance and the registration certificate#

These fields hold the figures and the certificate details:

• Max take-off mass (g) in grams: more than 0 and at most 10,000,000 (ten tonnes). Leave it empty if you do not record it. Under the box, the page reads the figure back in the mass unit you chose on My Account (for example "That is 2.20 lb."), and the aircraft page shows it in that unit; the record keeps grams. Under the United States regime the register asks for it, because 55 lb at takeoff is the line between a small unmanned aircraft and a larger one. An aircraft built from a type, or assigned to one, takes the type's all-up mass at freeze when it has none; you can change it here.
• Rated endurance: optional, the flight time the maker rates the aircraft for, in minutes: more than 0 and at most 1,440. A value outside that range is refused with the reason, and leaving it blank records none. The aircraft page shows it, and the Mission Planner checks a route against it when the aircraft has no linked build you can see.
• Registered with: the registering authority; the placeholder names your regime's.
• Certificate holder and Registration issued: the holder and the issue date as printed on the registration certificate. Importing a certificate fills them.
• FCC ID and Remote ID module FCC ID: optional, the FCC IDs on the labels of the aircraft and of a broadcast module, as printed, up to 19 characters. Recorded and shown, never checked.
• Declaration reference: the manufacturer's declaration or the authority's acceptance letter that covers this model, where your regime has one (Canada's Standard 922 declaration for advanced operations), up to 120 characters. Recorded, never checked; on the Records page it is asked, under the Canadian regime, of an aircraft that has flown an advanced operation.
• Registration expires and In service since: dates from 2000-01-01 on. Where your regulator's registration runs out (in the United States, a small unmanned aircraft registration under Part 48 three years after it is issued), a blank Registration expires is listed as expiry not recorded until you enter the date.

Acquisition and value#

The last fields are for how the aircraft was bought and what it is worth:

• Acquired on, Acquisition cost (with its currency), Contract signed (the day the purchase contract was signed) and Funding source (any of Federal funds or a federal grant, State funds, Local government funds and Private funds): optional, for the reports that ask how and when an aircraft was bought, such as the Texas 423.008 export. A blank cost is printed as not recorded, never as zero.
• Hull value: what the airframe is insured for, zero or more, in the currency chosen beside it. A new aircraft's currency starts as your primary regime's (pounds for a British organization, Australian dollars for an Australian one, and so on); an edit keeps what was recorded.
• Notes: free text.

When you save#

A value the register cannot hold (a mass of zero, an unknown airframe type, a date that is not a date) is refused with a message saying what is accepted, and the aircraft is not registered until it is corrected, so no slot is used. Registering consumes one Fleet Manager slot; if no slot is available, nothing is registered.

Only an organization admin registers and edits aircraft. Members see the fleet read-only and can still file flights against it.

Slots and per-aircraft billing#

An aircraft slot is what a subscription pays for: your organization holds a number of Fleet Manager slots, and each registered aircraft in service spends one, for Fleet Manager and Fleet Health together. For a person who can buy, the Aircraft page shows a link under the register, for example "3 of 5 aircraft slots in use". It opens the Aircraft slots card under Organization, then Billing, then Plan, which shows a meter for each product sold by the aircraft, the price of one more slot with its currency, and what a slot covers. Billing, then Add-ons uses the same words. An entitlement with no seat cap shows as covering all aircraft.

• A registered aircraft in service always holds a Fleet Manager slot, and the slot covers it for Fleet Health. Retiring the aircraft, or removing it, frees its slot.
• Fleet Health has no switch of its own: every aircraft holding a Fleet Manager slot is covered for Fleet Health too.
• Buy more slots under Organization, then Billing, then Add-ons, even when your plan includes slots. Enter the number in More aircraft and press Buy; the sentence under the box says what you will pay first. On a one-time add-on the slots are added. On a monthly or yearly add-on, the count you pay for that period goes up by the number you enter, and slots your plan includes, slots RotorLab granted and one-time slots are never added to it. When your plan is paid by card, the card subscription counts only the slots you added on the card, and the sentence under the box says so before you buy, for example "Your slots on More aircraft (annual), billed yearly, go from 1 to 2: <price> a year (<price> per aircraft). Your 12 slots held for good stay as they are."

When every slot is in use and you try to register another aircraft, the page prices one more slot on the spot and spells out exactly what you will be charged before you confirm. The slot is sold on the same billing period, monthly or yearly, as the slots you already hold. On a one-time purchase you buy one additional slot; on a monthly or yearly subscription the subscription quantity moves to cover the whole fleet, and the confirmation states the new total. When your organization already pays by card subscription, the slot is added to it and the card on file is charged for the part-period as soon as you confirm.

When your plan is paid by purchase order and its invoiced period is running, the slot is added at once and invoiced on your account for the part of the period until the plan renews: the confirmation shows the invoice's exact amount, tax and total and asks for the purchase order number, your plan's by default; see Paying by purchase order. Otherwise you are taken to checkout, where you can pay by card or by purchase order where purchase orders are offered, and brought back here. Either way the aircraft is registered automatically once the slot is yours.

Fleet Manager per aircraft type#

Fleet Manager can also be held per aircraft type. Each covered type registers every serial built or assigned to it without using an aircraft slot, so a manufacturer pays for the designs it builds rather than each airframe. When you buy types, the Fleet Manager card under Organization, then Billing, then Add-ons lists your types not yet covered under Aircraft types this purchase covers, with the oldest ticked to start with, and you tick the ones the purchase covers. Types you choose are covered first, then your oldest types; types your plan includes or RotorLab grants are counted oldest first. The card says how many types are covered and how many you have. Aircraft that are not serials of a covered type still each take a slot.

Related#

• Aircraft: the main page.
• An aircraft's page, status and retirement: the aircraft page, day-by-day status, retiring and logs.
• Importing aircraft: FAA certificates and spreadsheet import.
• Army flight records and origin lists: DA forms and covered foreign UAS lists.