Grounding is a status, not a sticky note.
The dangerous gap in most operations isn't the squawk nobody wrote down. It's the squawk somebody wrote down somewhere the schedule can't read. When a tail goes down here, it goes down everywhere at once.
One flag, two very different mornings.
Every squawk carries a grounding flag, and that single boolean decides where the airplane lands on the board. There's no severity guesswork, and no second step for someone to forget.
Out of service. Dispatch cannot assign the tail — the scheduler's availability check fails on it directly.
Flagged and visible, still dispatchable. A worn tyre and a rough magneto are not the same event, and the fleet view says which is which.
Reported once, moved by the work, closed by the fix.
A squawk's state is driven by the work order against it, not by a mechanic remembering to update two records. Open a work order and the squawk goes to in progress. Complete it and the squawk resolves and the aircraft returns to service.
Called on the ramp, logged on the spot, with the tail, the severity, the reporter, and the Hobbs reading at the moment it was found.
A work order was opened against it. The squawk flips itself — nobody maintains a second list.
The work order completed. The squawk closes and the aircraft comes back to available.
The 100-hour is arithmetic. Treat it that way.
Annual and 100-hour, per tail
Last and next annual, last and next 100-hour, carried on the aircraft itself — not a spreadsheet column someone forgot to shift after the last sign-off.
Due is due at the number
A plan sitting exactly at its 100-hour or annual limit reads as due, not dispatchable. Reaching the limit is reaching the limit.
Warnings on your interval
Each schedule carries its own warning window in days and in hours, so due-soon means what your shop means by it.
Status recomputes, it doesn't ratchet
Correct a mis-keyed Hobbs reading or extend an interval and the plan moves back down. A one-way slide into permanent overdue is a bug, not a safety feature.
Hobbs is Hobbs
Airborne time from the ADS-B feed never overwrites the Hobbs or tach columns. Hobbs drives the maintenance clock; corrupting it would ground the wrong airplane.
Every squawk gets a thread
Reporting a squawk opens a thread with the reporter and the office in it. A work order gets its own channel, never merged into the squawk's.
Plan status is one of three values — ok, due soon, overdue — derived from current inputs every time, so the fleet view can be trusted without a reconciliation ritual.
Maintenance is upstream of everyone's day.
Grounding is what the dispatch board reads. Maintenance windows cancel the bookings they swallow, and say which block did it.
ChatSquawk threads and work-order channels open themselves, with the reporter, the mechanic, and the office already in them.
Wingman AIAsk what's open and what's coming due. Wingman can report a squawk for you too — if your role is allowed to.
Does a squawk actually take the aircraft off the schedule?
If it is flagged as grounding, yes. A grounding squawk moves the aircraft to grounded, which is the out-of-service status the scheduler's availability check rejects. A non-grounding squawk marks the aircraft as squawked and leaves it dispatchable.
How does WingWrangler know an inspection is due?
Maintenance plan status is recomputed in one pass from the current Hobbs reading and today's date. A plan is overdue when its next-due date has passed or its next-due Hobbs has been reached, and due-soon inside the schedule's own warning days or warning hours.
Who can report a squawk?
Instructors, mechanics, students, and flying-club members can all create one — the person who found it is the person who should log it. Dispatchers and billing admins cannot.