Booking & Dispatch Settings

Configure jumpseats, booking validity, dispatch table columns, route creation defaults, and external flight tracking buttons.

Staff

Last verified: February 20, 2026

Booking & Dispatch Settings control how pilots book flights, what they see on the dispatch page, and how new routes are configured by default.

Accessing Booking & Dispatch Settings

In Orwell, go to Settings → Booking & Dispatch and Settings → Route Defaults. You need the Can See Airline Settings permission.

Jumpseat System

Jumpseats allow pilots to change their location without flying. Three tiered toggles control the scope:

Toggle	Description
Jumpseat System	Pilots can jumpseat to airports within the route network of their current location.
Jumpseat to Bases	Also allows jumpseating to hub/base airports outside the current route network.
Jumpseat Anywhere	Allows jumping to any airport in the entire network.

Booking Settings

Field	Description
Show Event/Focus Airport Markers	Replaces airport markers with red on the Book Flight and Destination maps for airports involved in active events or focus airports.
Enable Manual SimBrief	Allows creating SimBrief OFPs from the View Booking page as a secondary method. The primary method is via the Dispatch page.
Booking Validity — Default	How long a booking remains valid, in hours (1–200).
Booking Validity — Diversion Repositioning	How long a repositioning booking after a diversion remains valid, in hours (1–200).

Dispatch Functions

Features you can enable for the Dispatch page in Phoenix.

Aircraft Selection

Require Explicit Aircraft Selection — pilots must select an aircraft before seeing the rest of the dispatch options. Bypassed if there is only one fleet type or the pilot has enabled a bypass in their settings.
Force Aircraft Selection Even with Single Fleet — disables the single-fleet bypass, but the pilot's personal bypass setting is still honoured.

Highlight Booked Aircraft

Three mutually exclusive options — only one can be active at a time:

Highlight aircraft booked in other bookings
Highlight aircraft currently in the air
Highlight aircraft booked in the past hour

Departure & Arrival Times

Enable Departure and Arrival Times — shows route times in the dispatch table.
Invent Times if Empty — auto-generates departure times based on current time + 45 minutes when a route has no times set.
Show Local Route Times — displays route times in the local timezone of the airport instead of UTC.

Next Departures

When departure times are enabled, you can add a "Next Departures" preset button to the dispatch table and Book Flight map. It filters to flights departing within a configurable time window.

From (hours from now) — start of window. Default: 0 (now). Range: 0–23.5 in 30-minute steps.
To (hours from now) — end of window. Default: 3. Range: 0.5–24 in 30-minute steps.

Other Dispatch Functions

Toggle	Description
Enable Route Tags	Allows adding tags to routes. Tags are shown in the dispatch table and can be filtered in the Book Flight page.
Flight Centre Fleet Filters	Adds fleet type filters across Flight Centre.
Enable SimBrief Overrides Preview	Allows pilots to preview the exact data and overrides sent to the SimBrief API. Staff always have access regardless of this setting.

Dispatch Extras

External flight tracking buttons shown in the Dispatch and View Booking pages.

Toggle	Description
FlightAware Button	Link to FlightAware.
Flightradar24 Button	Link to Flightradar24. Optionally set a callsign prefix override (max 3 characters) to force a custom flight number on all FR24 links.
FR24 Aircraft Lookup	Pilots can look up which aircraft flew a route historically using Flightradar24 data.
AirNav Radar Button	Link to AirNav RadarBox.

Dispatch Table Defaults

Configure the column order, visibility, and labels for the dispatch table. Column visibility is controlled entirely by these settings — pilots see exactly the columns you configure here.

Available columns: Departure, Arrival, Callsign, Flight Number, Operator, ATC Callsign, Fleets, Remarks, ETD, ETA, Flight Time, Distance, Days of Operation, Flight Type, and Tags.

Per-column options:

Visible by Default — whether the column is shown initially.
Custom Label — override the default column header text.
Airport Identifier Display — ICAO, IATA, or both (Departure and Arrival columns only).
Days Display Format — abbreviated (Mon, Tue) or numeric (1, 2) for the Days of Operation column.

Default sorting can be configured by column and direction (ascending or descending). Drag rows to reorder columns.

Route Creation Defaults

Default settings applied when creating new routes. Found under Settings → Route Defaults.

Only the Callsign Defaults Are Creation-Only

The callsign defaults on this page apply to newly created routes only — existing routes keep the callsign settings they were created with. Route Times Use Local is the exception: it applies to your existing routes as well as new ones. See below before you change it.

Local Times

Route Times Use Local — when enabled, departure and arrival times entered for routes are treated as the local time of the airport instead of UTC. This affects route creation and editing in Orwell, importers/exporters, and the API.

It applies to your existing routes too, not just new ones. Route times are always stored in UTC, so switching this on changes how every route you already have is read back: a route stored as 12:00 shows as 13:00 in the Orwell route editor, in exports, and over the API at an airport one hour ahead of UTC. Saving the setting does not rewrite anything by itself, but the times move by the relevant airport's UTC offset everywhere they are shown, so review your schedule afterwards instead of correcting them by hand. What pilots see on the dispatch page is a separate setting — Show Local Route Times, under Dispatch Settings.

Imports Follow Whichever Setting Is Active

An import is converted using the setting in force when the file is processed. Re-importing a spreadsheet of UTC times while Route Times Use Local is on shifts every row by the airport's UTC offset, and rows carrying an existing route ID overwrite the stored times of those routes. Export a fresh copy after changing the setting rather than reusing an older file.

Callsign Defaults

Controls how callsigns are generated for new routes. The options are mutually exclusive — only one can be active:

Option	Behaviour
Allow Callsign Change	Pilots can enter their preferred callsign during dispatch.
Username Callsign (Option 1)	Callsign defaults to the pilot's username.
Username Callsign (Option 2)	Callsign defaults to the first letters of each word in the pilot's name.
Aircraft Registration	Callsign defaults to the aircraft registration. Callsign cannot be changed during dispatch.

If none of the above are enabled, a Callsign Generator regex pattern can be configured. For example, [A-Z][A-Z][0-9][0-9] generates callsigns like AB97. A "Generate Sample" button lets you test the pattern.

Permissions

Permission	Grants
Can See Airline Settings	Access to Booking & Dispatch and Route Defaults pages

Bookings — booking system overview
Routes — route management
Routings — routing configuration
Callsign Parameters — airline callsign codes and fleet assignments

Was this article helpful?

Help us improve this article:

What were you looking for? What was missing or confusing?

Back to Documentation