Crew wellness comes down to four outcomes
Airlines talk a lot about crew wellness, but true well-being goes beyond the number of days off or the length of duty hours. It comes down to something simpler: does your crew feel like they have any say over their roster?
Many airlines already let crew bid for their preferences. But once the roster is published, there’s no formal process at many airlines that gives crew the right to get a request fulfilled. So, when something comes up — a family event, a need for a shorter duty day — crew are left sending emails to the crew trackers or reaching out to colleagues, hoping someone can help. Unlike office-based employees, who can simply leave early or stay home for a day, flight crew don’t have that everyday flexibility built into how they work. The roster is set and changing it means hoping someone has time to process the request and that an option exists that allows it to be fulfilled. It’s not always clear whether a request has been processed and not fulfilled, or whether it’s still waiting to be processed.
Jeppesen ForeFlight Crew Tracking Request closes that gap — These are four outcomes it delivers for your crew and your team:
1. Flexibility comes first
Once you publish a roster, crew can log in and submit modification requests — time off, a preferred trip, a shorter duty length. Your crew gains flexibility with an easy way to ask for what they need on a live roster. Crew members can also see the status of their request.
2. Visibility raises the odds
The submitted requests become visible to Crew Trackers in two ways: in a dedicated view showing every submitted request, and directly on that crew member’s roster inside the editor Crew Trackers already use every day.
That second part matters. A Crew Tracker doesn’t have to go looking for requests to act on — a crew member’s request shows up right where the Crew Tracker is already working, any time they view that roster.”
Sometimes fulfilling a request even helps the Crew Tracker find a solution that wouldn’t have been available if the crew member hadn’t placed it.
3. Efficiency protects both sides
Processing requests can be time-consuming. Because requests land directly in the roster editor instead of an inbox or a shared drive, Crew Trackers no longer must read through emails or a shared-drive to find them, and they don’t have to cross-check rosters and trips before validating whether a request can be approved. The UI supports the workflow and enables Crew Trackers to process requests very quickly. The built-in compliance support means it’s immediately clear whether a request is legal, making processing faster. Requests that are legal and don’t need human evaluation can be automated — the Crew Tracker just clicks ‘process’ — freeing up their time for cases that genuinely need judgment. Nothing is saved automatically, so final control still rests with the Crew Tracker.
For your crew tracking team, that means:
- Streamlined operations — a clear overview of every submitted request, with faster processing times.
- Reduced workload with less administrative burden — routine requests are processed automatically at the Crew Tracker’s discretion, leaving only judgment calls to handle by hand.
4. Fairness builds trust
Every airline runs differently, so the system offers comprehensive configurability to support both agreement-regulated and non-regulated processes — first-come-first-served, seniority-based, or whatever order your airline has decided:
- Regulatory compliance processing for highly regulated role assignments
- Seniority-based priority, applied automatically so requests and assignments follow the right order every time
- Standby assignment, using defined parameters and protocols
- Flexible request processing, covering trips, trip attributes, days off, and trip drops
The takeaway
The most effective wellness initiatives aren’t always the most visible ones. Sometimes wellness is about removing friction from processes happening behind the scenes.
Flexibility, visibility, efficiency, fairness — four outcomes, one change. A crew member who trusts the process is a crew member who feels cared for. And a crew member who feels cared for is more likely to stay, show up rested, and bring their best to the job — which means less time and cost spent replacing people who didn’t have to leave in the first place.
See how Jeppesen ForeFlight Crew Tracking Request can help your airline.
Airlines talk a lot about crew wellness, but true well-being goes beyond the number of days off or the length of duty hours. It comes down to something simpler: does your crew feel like they have any say over their roster?
Many airlines already let crew bid for their preferences. But once the roster is published, there’s no formal process at many airlines that gives crew the right to get a request fulfilled. So, when something comes up — a family event, a need for a shorter duty day — crew are left sending emails to the crew trackers or reaching out to colleagues, hoping someone can help. Unlike office-based employees, who can simply leave early or stay home for a day, flight crew don’t have that everyday flexibility built into how they work. The roster is set and changing it means hoping someone has time to process the request and that an option exists that allows it to be fulfilled. It’s not always clear whether a request has been processed and not fulfilled, or whether it’s still waiting to be processed.
Jeppesen ForeFlight Crew Tracking Request closes that gap — These are four outcomes it delivers for your crew and your team:
1. Flexibility comes first
Once you publish a roster, crew can log in and submit modification requests — time off, a preferred trip, a shorter duty length. Your crew gains flexibility with an easy way to ask for what they need on a live roster. Crew members can also see the status of their request.
2. Visibility raises the odds
The submitted requests become visible to Crew Trackers in two ways: in a dedicated view showing every submitted request, and directly on that crew member’s roster inside the editor Crew Trackers already use every day.
That second part matters. A Crew Tracker doesn’t have to go looking for requests to act on — a crew member’s request shows up right where the Crew Tracker is already working, any time they view that roster.”
Sometimes fulfilling a request even helps the Crew Tracker find a solution that wouldn’t have been available if the crew member hadn’t placed it.
3. Efficiency protects both sides
Processing requests can be time-consuming. Because requests land directly in the roster editor instead of an inbox or a shared drive, Crew Trackers no longer must read through emails or a shared-drive to find them, and they don’t have to cross-check rosters and trips before validating whether a request can be approved. The UI supports the workflow and enables Crew Trackers to process requests very quickly. The built-in compliance support means it’s immediately clear whether a request is legal, making processing faster. Requests that are legal and don’t need human evaluation can be automated — the Crew Tracker just clicks ‘process’ — freeing up their time for cases that genuinely need judgment. Nothing is saved automatically, so final control still rests with the Crew Tracker.
For your crew tracking team, that means:
- Streamlined operations — a clear overview of every submitted request, with faster processing times.
- Reduced workload with less administrative burden — routine requests are processed automatically at the Crew Tracker’s discretion, leaving only judgment calls to handle by hand.
4. Fairness builds trust
Every airline runs differently, so the system offers comprehensive configurability to support both agreement-regulated and non-regulated processes — first-come-first-served, seniority-based, or whatever order your airline has decided:
- Regulatory compliance processing for highly regulated role assignments
- Seniority-based priority, applied automatically so requests and assignments follow the right order every time
- Standby assignment, using defined parameters and protocols
- Flexible request processing, covering trips, trip attributes, days off, and trip drops
The takeaway
The most effective wellness initiatives aren’t always the most visible ones. Sometimes wellness is about removing friction from processes happening behind the scenes.
Flexibility, visibility, efficiency, fairness — four outcomes, one change. A crew member who trusts the process is a crew member who feels cared for. And a crew member who feels cared for is more likely to stay, show up rested, and bring their best to the job — which means less time and cost spent replacing people who didn’t have to leave in the first place.
See how Jeppesen ForeFlight Crew Tracking Request can help your airline.