To sign in, select the Sign In link from the blue bar at the top of the screen. Enter the username and password that you picked when you registered for access.

All users must register for access to the system. After your registration is complete, the account is disabled until the system administrator has enabled the account. This will usually occur within one day of registration.

Some functions are restricted to certain users, and other users will get the message You do not have access rights to modify this item. See your system administrator if you are not able to create and modify your aircraft or instructor schedules.

Note that any existing scheduled entries will continue to display your phone number. All schedules created in the future will show "UNLISTED" instead of the phone number. If you wish, you may go back and edit your existing schedule entries to clear the phone number there.

As a normal user, your name and phone number will be filled in. The name cannot be changed, but a different phone number may be entered. If you are logged in as one of the office staff (super user), you can make reservations for other members so the name field is now a drop down list of all members. As you select a member, their default phone number is placed in the phone number field. The phone number may be changed as desired.

Enter any notes about the schedule in the description field. This field may be left blank if desired.

If you are scheduling an aircraft and wish to schedule an instructor for the same time, select the instructor from the drop down list. Set to none (the default) if you want to schedule just the aircraft.

Select the date for the schedule. The default date is the date selected on the main screen. The date may be changed to any date desired.

Enter the starting time. The default time is the time selected on the main screen. The time may be changed to any time desired.

Enter the duration of the booking or select All day as desired. The time may be entered in the selected units (minutes, hours, days or weeks). The default time is 2 hours.

See How do I make a recurring schedule? on the use of the repeat information items.

When all entries are complete, press the Save button to complete the scheduling.

A Daily repeat schedules every day. A Weekly repeat schedules those days of the week that you check under Repeat Day. For example, use Weekly repeat to schedule the aircraft or instructor every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday; check those days under Repeat Day. If you check no days under Repeat Day, the schedule will repeat on the same day of each week as the first scheduled day. A Monthly repeat schedules the same day of each month, for example the 15th of the month. A Yearly repeat schedules the same month and day of the month, for example every March 15th. Finally, a Monthly, corresponding day repeat schedules one day each month, the same weekday and ordinal position within the month. Use this repeat type to schedule the first Monday, second Tuesday, or fourth Friday of each month, for example. Do not use this repeat type after the 28th day of the month.

Any number of standby requests may be made. The system will schedule the next person in order any time an existing booking is canceled.

Note that the system will not assign your standby request unless the entire time period is available. In other words, if you have requested a two hour block and only 1.5 hours is available, the system will not assign any of the available time to you.

The OpenFBO Booking System written by Matt Barclay is based on the Meeting Room Booking System. AircraftScheduling was created from OpenFBO by Jim Covington. OpenFBO aspires to be a lot more than AircraftScheduling so I renamed it to keep from causing confusion.

The system is written mostly in PHP, which is an open source programming language that can be embedded in web pages similar in concept to Microsoft active server pages. PHP is especially good at accessing databases.

The database used for the system is either MySQL or PostgreSQL. MySQL is a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server that is also GPL. PostgreSQL is a full-featured multi-user open source Object Relational SQL database server.

The system will run on multiple platforms, including the PC architecture using the Linux operating system. Linux, is a free, open source, unix-like operating system.

The web server being used is yet another piece of free, open source software. The Apache web server is the world's most popular web server.

The bottom line is:
Every piece of this system, from the operating system to the application, is completely free - source code and all.