What the Ground Decides

Three questions, asked once

The three answers on the fixed shelf are properties of a place rather than of a day. Establish them at the start of a trip and they never need asking again, which is exactly the opposite of everything on the perishable shelf.

• How long is the runway. It rules aircraft in or out before anything else is considered.
• Does the field clear customs. It decides whether an international trip can end where somebody wants it to.
• What are the hours. It decides the last possible departure and the earliest arrival.

Why they are worth asking first

Because they are cheap to answer and expensive to discover late. Nobody has to be telephoned, no aircraft has to be held, and nothing expires while the question is being considered.

A request that arrives with those three settled can be placed with operators immediately. One that arrives without them may get quotes for a trip that cannot physically happen.

Where the fixed and the perishable meet

A field that closes at ten and a crew whose duty runs out at nine leave one hour between them, and each looks manageable alone.

That collision is the argument for the whole arrangement of this site: sorting by how long an answer lasts puts the things that never change next to the things that change hourly, and the interesting problems live where they touch.

What this desk does not do with these

Assess a field, advise whether an aircraft can use one, or tell anybody what a runway means for a particular type. That is the operator's calculation with the operator's own performance data, and a broker doing it would be doing arithmetic it has no standing to do.