It is easy to underestimate the huge responsibilities and crucial role a flight dispatcher has in ensuring flights are effectively planned, monitored, and executed safely and efficiently.

With the crucial roles they handle daily, flight dispatchers can face many challenges.

Here are our Top 5 Challenges in Flight Dispatch. Along with potential solutions, to support their hard work behind the scenes in keeping operations running smoothly! 

1. Real-Time Communication with Flight Crews

Challenge
Dispatchers need to ensure timely communication with the pilots, during irregular operations or emergencies.

During the flight briefing phase, traditional methods like sending emails or even printing off and having ground staff or courier send updated charts are unreliable. Potentially leading to significant delays and data instantly become outdated.

Solution
Modern EFB applications such as skybook enable real-time briefing package updates and communication, ensuring critical weather & NOTAM information is relayed promptly to flight crews.

Digital briefing simplifies the pilot briefing process, giving the flight crew more time to focus on their upcoming flight, and helps ensure more on-time departures and arrivals.

Dispatchers also see real-time status updates, automatically communicated from the pilots EFB device. This creates a digital touchpoint each time the pilot goes to the next step of their flight phase workflow. 

2. Monitoring Weather & Flights Challenge

Challenge
Dispatchers have to interpret and act on rapidly changing weather data, such as turbulence, upper winds, and convective weather. This requires precision to help avoid upcoming delays and maintain operational safety. 

All this while keeping track of multiple aircraft, ensuring they follow planned routes, and responding to deviations can overwhelm dispatchers!

Without reliable flight watch capabilities, situational awareness is reduced, making it challenging for flight dispatch to track an aircraft’s planned and actual progress.

Solution
Therefore Flight monitoring tools that integrate ADS-B data with planned OFP routes provide a holistic view of the fleet, alerting dispatchers to route deviations enabling quick action to address operational challenges.

With advanced weather overlays and real time airfield information, makes it easier for dispatchers to visualise and instantly respond to conditions; improving decision making and planning.

3. Crew & Flight Schedule Changes

Challenge
One of the biggest challenges for flight dispatchers is managing last-minute changes to crew assignments and flight schedules.

These disruptions can occur due to various factors such as sickness, unexpected delays extending legal work hours or technical issues; requiring quick decision making to ensure smooth operations.

Solution
Integrating crew scheduling systems makes it quick for dispatchers to quickly suggest changes to crew members while considering duty time limits, qualifications, and standby rosters.

4. Managing Fuel Efficiency and Costs

Challenge
Managing fuel for each flight based on factors like route, weather, alternate airports, and regulatory requirements can be a challenge for dispatchers.

Balancing operational efficiency with fuel costs is critical, particularly when rerouting or adjusting plans due to unforeseen events.

Solution
Advanced fuel calculations on EFB applications provide pilots with fuel requirements, reserves, and other demands.

Dispatchers are able to view the fuel information and fuel orders on the flight data summary, and can access fuel reports to compare planned vs actual fuel data. Helping flight dispatch to make cost-effective decisions when it comes to any fuel orders.

5. Ensuring Regulatory Compliance 

Challenge
Adhering to aviation regulations like GADSS compliance and ETOPS / EDTO requirements can be a time-consuming process with significant operational implications.

Solution
Flight operations officers can rest reassured, with the use of a ground portal that generates compliant ETOPS charts and route plot data to the highest standard.

Providing detailed audit trails with automatically created flight summary reports, simplifying the compliance process and minimising errors.

By addressing these top challenges in flight dispatch with the right technology and streamlined workflows, dispatchers can improve operational efficiency, safety, and decision making across the board.

The skybook Dispatch solution enhances productivity and provides up-to-date information, crucial for staying on schedule.