Ex-Spirit Pilots Receive Help Getting Their Logbooks in Order

FLYING Magazine

Former Spirit pilots left out of work by the discount carrier’s sudden collapse earlier this year are receiving some help with a critical part of the job search—getting their logbooks in order.

AIROS, which assists aviators in consolidating and checking their records through a cloud-based digital logbook, decided in May that it would make its service free for ex-Spirit pilots.

“We knew we had to do something, and we knew that whatever we did, out-of-work pilots weren’t going to be asked to spend money,” AIROS founder and CEO David Spektor told FLYING. “So we arrived at offering six months free for Spirit pilots. The thought was, we can bear that cost, and hopefully it comes back to us in the long run. And what it turned into was something quite special.”

AIROS’ system is more than a digital form of paper records, or, as Spektor compared it to some competing platforms, “more than a spreadsheet with an app wrapped around it.”

The system can retrieve tail numbers for flights, calculate details like night and cross-country flight time automatically, and render flight information in a way that complies with airline hiring requirements. It stores all that information in the cloud, a step up from paper records, which can be destroyed or misplaced, and much safer than device-based products that rely on local storage on devices such as phones, which can break.

Unlike other digital logbooks, AIROS can catch mistakes and entries that don’t make sense before they become a permanent part of the logbook, Spektor said.

“We go a step further,” he said. “When a pilot is logging in AIROS, it will protect the pilot and audit as you go. Whereas in a spreadsheet, you can enter anything. It doesn’t protect you from the same vulnerabilities presented by paper.”

Accuracy and attention to detail are critical when assembling a logbook because it serves as the definitive record of a pilot’s experience.

“The granularity is important,” Spektor said. “It really gives the reviewer a picture of who you are as an aviator. It is the official legal record of what you have done as a pilot. It’s your journey captured in a document.”

Ryan Bingle flew for Spirit for 11 and a half years before the airline ceased operations in May. While he had scheduling records, he hadn’t kept a formal logbook in many years, and he sought out AIROS for assistance.

“They had a big task, because I knew what I had to have in order, and I didn’t have any of that,” Bingle said. “And David said, no problem at all, we can pull all these records, we can get tail numbers…I was able to give them this mess, and they could convert it all into AIROS.”

Bingle knew that he would have to get his logbook solidified before approaching potential employers.

“The airlines are really picky with logbooks right now,” he said. “You have to have every ‘I’ dotted and ‘T’ crossed. We spent a lot of time going through everything and putting it in a format that works for the airlines.”

The hard work is paying off. Bingle said that he has received job offers from two airlines so far.

Spektor, who currently works as an airline pilot, started building the company that became AIROS after receiving a furlough notice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I went to go catch up my logbook and very quickly discovered that the digital options at that time in 2020 had not changed and had not improved since 2010,” he said. “A decade had gone by and nothing had changed. So I said, now I know what I’m going to do while I’m furloughed. I’ve found a problem to solve, and no one’s flying anyway, so this is a good time to solve it.”

Today, AIROS has pilots on its operational team, board of directors, and among the investor group, according to Spektor, giving the company valuable perspective on its work.

“It has allowed us to keep a very good pulse on the industry, and it makes it easy for us as a company to make good decisions with the pilot top of mind,” he said. “Because that’s who we’re here for, the pilots. We don’t take lightly that what we are charged with is being responsible custodians of a pilot’s most important legal document.”

Spektor said AIROS has assisted over 200 former Spirit pilots so far and would welcome the chance to work with more.

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