E-FOSS

The Problem

Three Jet Airways departments operated around the clock — the Flight Dispatch Unit, the Integrated Operations Control Centre (IOCC), and Flight Operations — together managing the safe and economical conduct of every Jet Airways and JetLite flight. Flight Dispatchers, Flight Operations Assistants, and support staff worked across route planning, NOTAM management, fuel advisory, diversion reporting, crew liaison, and regulatory compliance.

All of it was managed on paper or in MS Excel workbooks and MS Word documents. Training records were manually maintained spreadsheets. Rosters were hand-calculated by the Roster-in-charge. Operational reports were typed into Word templates and distributed by email. The process was tedious, error-prone, and entirely dependent on individual discipline.

The Solution — Three Modules

E-FOSS was built as a direct extension of the existing Airvionics DMS platform. Rather than building a separate system, the E-FOSS framework layered over the established authentication, user management, and group structure of Airvionics DMS — extending the existing Flight Dispatch user base with new metadata, roles, and access permissions specific to the FD unit.

Module 1 — FD Training Records

Flight Dispatchers require periodic regulatory training and approvals — each with its own validity period, expiry triggers, and renewal process. The training records module replaced manual Excel workbooks with a web-based system covering 14 training programs, each with configurable validity periods, automated expiry notifications, and six pre-defined compliance reports downloadable as CSV.

The automated notification system sent tiered alerts to each Flight Dispatcher as their training validity approached expiry — starting months in advance and escalating in frequency as the deadline approached. Different programs had different trigger timelines: aircraft type approvals triggered three months out, familiarisation flights one month out, BA currency three weeks out.

Module 2 — Roster Manager

The FD Unit ran a 24/7 operation across three shifts — morning (7 hours), afternoon (8 hours), and night (9 hours) — with regulatory requirements specifying minimum staffing levels per shift, including the mandatory number of approved Flight Dispatchers. The Roster-in-charge had to balance training schedules, leave, qualifications, and last-minute contingencies manually in Excel.

The E-FOSS Roster Manager replaced this with a web-based operational rostering system — dynamically populating work patterns, automatically marking company holidays and training dates, integrating leave sanctions directly into the roster, and surfacing manpower warnings when regulatory minimums were at risk.

• Monthly roster creation with work pattern templates — automatically carried forward
• Day-to-day actuals tracking — shift changes, double shifts, sick leave, contingencies
• Leave Manager — application, approval workflow, automatic roster integration
• FD Group management — separate rosters per specialisation (Route Planning, Flight Dispatch, NOTAM)
• Variable Pay calculation — based on flights dispatched, grade factor, attendance, and productivity
• Credits system — double shifts, shift changes, sick leave, and holiday penalties tracked automatically
• Manpower indicators — warnings when shift staffing falls below regulatory minimum

Module 3 — Operational Reports

The FD Unit's Safety Management System required structured daily reporting on shift handovers, flight diversions, station briefs, delays, and special incidents. These reports were maintained in MS Word and distributed by email — with no central record, no structured data, and no audit trail.

E-FOSS digitised five FD operational report forms and two IOCC (Integrated Operations Control Centre) reports — each with structured field-level data capture, automated PDF generation, email distribution to pre-determined recipients, and dashboard-based date-searchable archives.

Built on Airvionics DMS

One of the defining architectural decisions was building E-FOSS as an extension of the existing Airvionics DMS platform rather than as a standalone system. The Flight Dispatch user base was already in Airvionics DMS — the authentication layer, group management, and document distribution infrastructure was already running.

E-FOSS extended that infrastructure with a new section — adding FD-specific metadata to user profiles, introducing a new "Dispatch" division alongside the existing "Docs" division, and creating Power User and Duty Manager privilege levels specific to FD operations. The existing DMS and WICS modules continued operating unchanged alongside the new E-FOSS section.

This approach meant no parallel login, no duplicate user management, no separate system to maintain. The FD team used one platform — Airvionics DMS — for both document compliance and operational management.

The Scope Document

The E-FOSS scope document was prepared by Webonautics for Manoj Arora and Sudipto Chandra of the Jet Airways Flight Dispatch team prior to build. It covered full functional specifications, technical field-level specifications for all report forms, timeline, and deliverables.

The scope was developed from meetings held in October and November 2015, and incorporated sample report formats, training forms, and roster samples provided by the FD team via email across three tranches in September, October, and November 2015.

E-FOSS went live in 2016 and operated continuously until Jet Airways ceased operations in April 2019. As with all Webonautics project documentation, the scope document and its contents — including all specifications, field charts, workflow diagrams, and sample formats — are copyright Webonautics.