Booking & Dispatch Settings

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:

1. Highlight aircraft booked in other bookings

2. Highlight aircraft currently in the air

3. 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 default column order, visibility, and labels for the dispatch table. Pilots can still override column visibility in their session — their preferences are remembered.

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.

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.

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

Related

• Bookings — booking system overview

• Routes — route management

• Routings — routing configuration

• Callsign Parameters — airline callsign codes and fleet assignments