Aviation range / Aero Hangar
Aero Hangar
The aircraft register of a flight school or a flying club: what flies today, what is in the workshop and until when, the last reading of each counter, and the on-board documents with the day each one runs out.
The plugin is written for the fleet manager, who does this job in the evening, standing up, between two flights. Every screen opens on what has to be decided today, and the most frequent gesture, declaring an aircraft unavailable, is one button away on every line. Premium adds maintenance, the accounts of each aircraft and the defects reported by pilots.
Available Free · Premium No external service English and French Premium €19.99 / month excl. VAT v3.0.0
No cap on aircraft, documents or readings. The dashboard, the on-board documents and their expiry dates, the message to pilots and the public grid are in the free version.
The plugin calls nothing to do its work. Aircraft, readings and documents never leave your server, and a document is served by the plugin alone, never by the media library.
Dedicated tables, no other plugin required. When Aero Users is installed, the two share their roles; Aero Weight & Balance will read here the aircraft to weigh.
What the plugin does
Keep the register
- One file per aircraft: registration, serial number, type picked from a catalogue that fills in the rest
- A silhouette chosen from the type among twenty-four, or the aircraft’s own photo
- Aeroplane, helicopter and microlight, each with the rules it flies under
- Counters that say what they count and on which instrument
- Eleven kinds of on-board documents, each with its expiry date
Answer before the flight
- The dashboard sorted by urgency: what is grounded first
- Declare unavailable with two dates and a reason, from any line
- The expected return announced, for the planning to read
- The fleet grid on the club’s site, as a block or a shortcode
Lose nothing
- A status is said by somebody, on a date, for a reason: the journal keeps all of it
- A reading never overwrites the previous one
- Documents in a closed folder, served only to the account that holds the right
- A log of refused downloads, readable in the settings
- A sold aircraft is archived; if it comes back, you reactivate it, the serial number is what counts
What Premium adds
Follow maintenance
- Reminders at 90, 30 and 7 days before, one the day after, and a weekly summary
- Due items in hours, cycles and dates, with their tolerance and the remaining potential
- The date projected at the pace of each aircraft, bookings included
- The fleet planner over 30 days, 90 days or 12 months, printed on one A4 sheet
- Workshop return in one form: the visit, its references and what it clears
- Maintenance programmes by type, with sourced indicative templates to check
Keep the accounts
- Hour packs under the hourly rate, and the public page of one aircraft
- The report: availability, immobilisations, hours and flights per aircraft
- Cost per hour against the rate, excluding or including VAT, exported as CSV
- The expenses of each aircraft, invoice attached, entered or imported
- Owners, contracts, their notice periods and who pays what
- Import of the flight logs and bookings exported from Aerogest
Listen to the pilots
- A defect reported from the phone, on leaving the aircraft
- One QR code per aircraft, to stick on board
- An email at once to the technical manager, then to the pilot at each answer
- The aircraft made unavailable from the report
- The work request printed for the workshop
A status is a sentence said by somebody, on a date
An aircraft shown as “in service” in Aero Hangar means that one person said so on one date. It is a statement by the club about how it organises itself. The plugin issues no release to service and extends no airworthiness review certificate: those signatures belong to the organisations entitled to sign them, and no line written here replaces them.
It replaces neither the journey log, which the crew fills in and which travels with the aircraft, nor the aircraft file, which the maintenance organisation keeps. It records what the club decided about a machine, who decided it and when, so that everybody reads the same thing. And it says so on every screen where the question could be read the wrong way.
What the plugin keeps
- The aircraft
- One file per machine: registration, serial number, manufacturer and model picked from the catalogue, category, seats, home base, year, operating rules, hourly rate, silhouette or photo.
- The statuses
- In service, unavailable, grounded with no return date, archived. Each one opened by a person, on a date, for a reason, with an expected return when there is one. The screen of today reads the open line, the history stays readable underneath.
- The counters
- A reading is identified by what it counts and the instrument it is read on: airframe hours on the Hobbs, on the tachometer, on the journey log. Two different pairs are two different series.
- The documents
- Eleven kinds, from the certificate of registration to the insurance certificate, the radio station licence, the weighing report and the maintenance programme. A date read on the document, a visibility, a file when you have it.
- The public page
- The fleet grid, as a block or a shortcode, in light and in dark. Nothing about owners, contracts, documents or readings appears there.
Free or Premium
Premium is for the school that keeps its maintenance and its accounts in a spreadsheet and would rather keep them here. It installs over the free plugin and keeps everything it recorded; the free plugin holds no feature back behind a licence.
The plugin records what the school decided about its aircraft. It issues no release to service and extends no airworthiness review certificate.
Licence for one site, renewable and cancellable at any time. Launch offer: 20% off the first year when paid yearly, with the code HANGAR26, until 31 December 2026; then €199 a year excluding VAT. Prices exclude VAT: the buyer’s VAT is added at checkout, and a school with an EU VAT number deducts it. Payment is handled by Freemius, our reseller, and you are refunded within 14 days if the plugin does not suit you.
Installing it
Download the archive, then in your WordPress: Plugins, Add New Plugin, Upload Plugin, choose the file and activate. Open the Aero Hangar menu and add your first aircraft: the catalogue fills in the model, the category and the seats for the most common types. Then record the documents that carry a date, the insurance certificate and the airworthiness review certificate first. The plugin needs WordPress 6.3 and PHP 7.4 at least.
Requirements
- Version
- 3.0.0
- WordPress
- 6.3 or later, tested up to 7.1
- PHP
- 7.4 or later
- Licence
- GPLv2 or later
- Integration
- One Gutenberg block, two shortcodes, a façade for developers; Premium adds the page of one aircraft and the defect report form
- Data
- Everything stays on your server; no external service
The steps
- 1 Upload the archive and activate the plugin.
- 2 Open the Aero Hangar menu and add the first aircraft.
- 3 Record the documents that carry a date.
- 4 Put the fleet grid on a page of the site: the “Our aircraft” block or the [aero_hangar] shortcode.
Links and languages
- Languages. The plugin ships in English and in French.
- Shortcodes.
[aero_hangar]for the grid,[aero_hangar_aircraft immat="F-GKLM"]for one aircraft,[aero_hangar_rate immat="F-GKLM"]for its rate in the middle of a sentence. - The range. Aero Hangar recognises Aero Users, Aero Courses and Aero Weather when they are installed beside it, and opens its list of aircraft to them.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to my data if I stop Premium?
Nothing is lost: the data stays in the database. The Premium screens close until renewal, and the free register keeps working.
Are the maintenance programme templates reliable?
They are sourced examples, neither manufacturer data nor regulatory data. They must be checked and validated, inspection by inspection, with your maintenance organisation; no due item is created without the box that confirms it.
Does it replace the journey log or the aircraft file?
No, and it never will. The journey log is filled in by the crew and travels with the aircraft; the aircraft file belongs to the maintenance organisation. The plugin records what the club decided about a machine, who decided it and when.
Who can see the documents?
Only the accounts that hold the permission to keep the on-board documents, unless you decide otherwise document by document: kept by the school, visible to signed-in members, or visible to everyone. Files never go through the media library, and a refused request is written to a log you can read.
An aircraft is back from the workshop. What do I do?
Open its line and declare it back in service, on the date it actually came back. The open unavailability is closed on that date, and the history keeps both.
What about an aircraft the club sells?
You archive it. Its line stays, its documents and its readings stay readable, and it leaves the public grid. If it comes back one day, you reactivate it rather than creating a second line: the serial number is what says it is the same aircraft.
Do I need the other plugins of the range?
No. Aero Hangar stands on its own and carries its own copy of the shared core. When Aero Users is installed beside it, the two share their roles rather than each keeping a list of its own.
Will there be a Pro version?
Yes, for the club that keeps its maintenance schedule somewhere else and would rather keep it here: due items in hours and dates with their tolerance, a ninety day planner, hour projection, workshop return on one screen, owners and contracts. Nothing you install today will be taken away.
Changelog
- 3.0.0
- Expiry reminders and the weekly summary, hour packs, the public page of one aircraft and printing the dashboard move to Premium. Hour packs already recorded stay in the database, and the reminder settings are kept.
See the 9 earlier versions
- 2.2.2
- The Aero range card shows the list shipped with the plugin, and reads it again from wptechnology.com only on the "Update the list" button, or every 7 days once the administrator has ticked the box for it. The documents table is created on every database, SQLite included, and the admin stylesheet only reaches the plugin's own screens.
- 2.2.1
- The daily tasks are scheduled once WordPress has finished loading, so activating the plugin next to other plugins, such as WooCommerce, shows no notice.
- 2.2.0
- The public card shows the status and its dates without the reason typed by the school: that reason stays inside the school, and the unavailability dialog says so. The other plugins of the range read the drawing of an aircraft, its status of the day and the link to its record.
- 2.1.0
- An hour pack can say that its rate includes the instructor: a “With instructor” box on each pack of the aircraft record, “with instructor” after the pack on the public card, and a with_instructor key in the developer façade, now in 2.1.
- 2.0.9
- The notice shown when the data could not be moved to its new table names now appears only on the plugin’s screens and on the Plugins screen.
- 2.0.8
- Maintenance release, with no change in what the plugin does.
- 2.0.7
- The developer façade keeps only what the plugin answers; the Aero range card offers to install Aerodrome METAR TAF from WordPress.org.
- 2.0.6
- Uninstalling keeps everything by default; one box in the settings erases all the data. Premium: the report counts in calendar quarters, the Expenses tab reads year by year and accepts amounts written with €, the list of defect reports is paged, a report written during an expired session is kept until the pilot signs in again.
- 2.0.5
- Premium: the import flags an Aerogest log cut at one screen page (25, 50, 100 or 1,000 lines), and stays quiet when a second file dropped with it fills the gap.
Need one more feature?
A kind of document specific to your authority, an export for your maintenance organisation, a link with your booking planner: we add features to the plugin or write a dedicated module.