Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about Hobbstack.
What is Hobbstack?
Hobbstack is an all-in-one aviation operations platform for flight schools, flying clubs, and aircraft partnerships. It handles scheduling, fleet management, billing, maintenance tracking, digital logbook, currency compliance, weather briefing, dispatch, automated dispatch receipts, and an offline-first flight wizard, all from one app that works on any device, even without internet.
Who is Hobbstack for?
Hobbstack is built for Part 61 and Part 141 flight schools, flying clubs, aircraft partnerships, USAF aero clubs, collegiate aviation programs, and any organization that manages a fleet of aircraft and a roster of pilots or students.
How much does Hobbstack cost?
Pilots, instructors, and students never pay individually — every paid plan includes unlimited members, instructors, and students. Personal flying is free forever on the Free Personal tier (your own logbook, currency, weather, and weight-and-balance for one personally-owned aircraft, with no organization required and no multi-user features). The moment you're operating inside an organization — even a single-aircraft partnership — you're on Solo at $19/mo, and Pro picks up at 2 aircraft and scales smoothly to $709/mo for fifty. Enterprise plans, for fleets above 50 aircraft, start from $1,199/mo with custom-quoted scope. Every paid plan includes a 30-day free trial (card on file at signup, no charge until day 30) and two months free on annual prepay. Migrating from another platform? 50% off your first 12 months on either monthly or annual — verified via proof upload.
What's the difference between tiers?
All paid plans — Solo, Pro, and Enterprise — cover the same product: scheduling, billing, logbook, weather briefing, dispatch authorization, maintenance forecasting, currency tracking, and the rest. What changes between them is the fleet size covered, plus onboarding scoped into the Enterprise quote. One exception worth naming rather than burying: developer API keys are currently issued on Enterprise only, so ask us if you need them on Solo or Pro. Free Personal sits on a different axis — it's for an individual pilot with no organization at all: personal logbook, currency, weather, and weight-and-balance for one personally-owned aircraft, and none of the multi-user features. So 'aircraft count' is the wrong way to tell it apart from Solo. The right way: Free Personal has no organization; Solo has an organization with one aircraft.
Do students and instructors pay anything?
No. Every paid plan covers unlimited members, so a student, instructor, or renter flying with your club never pays Hobbstack — your organization's subscription covers them, and they don't need a card to hold an account. There is no separate student price; students are simply members of your organization. A pilot who flies outside any organization can keep a Free Personal account instead: their own logbook, currency, weather, and weight-and-balance for one personally-owned aircraft, free, with none of the multi-user features.
Is there a free trial?
Yes. Every new organization gets a 30-day free trial with full features. We collect a card at signup (industry standard) but won't charge it until day 30. Cancel before then and you never see a charge — cancelling opens Stripe's billing page from your subscription screen, so it's a couple of taps rather than an email to us. After the trial, plans are month-to-month with no forced annual contract; annual billing is offered as an optional discount, never a requirement.
What happens if our subscription payment fails?
Stripe retries your card on its normal schedule. From the first failed payment the organization is marked past due and the commercial side stops: new bookings, charging members, and the developer API. What does not stop is anything to do with airworthiness. Reporting a squawk, grounding an aircraft, maintenance tracking and work orders, and Airworthiness Directive compliance all keep working — deliberately, because a lapsed card must never be the reason an unairworthy aircraft stays on the schedule. Reading your existing data keeps working too. That floor holds even if an account is suspended outright. Settle the balance and everything comes back.
How does dispatch chaining work?
When a pilot completes their flight checkout, Hobbstack releases the aircraft on its own and notifies the next pilot on the schedule that it's ready; their briefing packet is emailed when they start their flight. The next pilot gets fresh Hobbs, tach, and fuel readings without phone calls or paperwork. If a checkout runs overdue, staff are alerted and can release the aircraft manually.
How does the weather briefing work?
Hobbstack fetches live METAR, TAF, and NOTAM data for your airports — NOTAMs straight from the FAA, for departure and destination plus, when you've filed a route, the waypoints along it — and turns it into a plain-language summary with an automated go, caution, or no-go call. Dispatch cards and pre-flight briefing packets download as PDFs on request, built from the data already in the system with nothing to re-key. It has no separate temporary flight restriction feed, so a TFR reaches you only if the FAA published it as a NOTAM your airports or route return. Hobbstack is designed to supplement, never replace, an official FAA briefing from 1800WxBrief, and you still need that briefing to confirm restrictions before you fly.
Are NOTAMs included, and what happens if the feed goes down?
Yes. NOTAMs come live from the FAA's Notice to Air Missions service, for your departure and destination and, when you've filed a route, the waypoints along it. There is currently no second NOTAM source behind the FAA feed, so if it fails there is nothing to fall back on — which is exactly the case Hobbstack is built to handle loudly rather than quietly. A failed fetch is never shown as zero NOTAMs. The card reads 'Not retrieved' in amber, says in as many words that this is not an all-clear, offers a retry and the 1-800-WX-BRIEF number, and the go/no-go summary drops to caution instead of staying green. 'We couldn't reach the feed', 'the feed had nothing on file', and 'nothing falls inside your window' are kept as three separate answers everywhere they appear, because they mean completely different things to a pilot. As above: this supplements an official FAA briefing, it never replaces one.
Does Hobbstack work offline?
Yes. Hobbstack is built offline-first for pilots at remote airfields with no cell signal. The flight wizard, your schedule, and your fleet data are stored on the device itself, so you can run a flight from pre-flight through checkout with no connection. Anything you do offline is queued and syncs automatically when signal returns, and a banner shows the last sync time and anything still pending. One thing to plan around: the dispatch board needs a connection, so pull your briefing packet before you lose signal rather than after.
What is the flight wizard?
The flight wizard is a guided, step-by-step system for recording flights, from pre-flight checks through in-flight data to post-flight checkout and CFI sign-off. It works fully offline, tracks Hobbs, tach, fuel, oil, landings, and more, and automatically generates logbook entries, billing line items, and a USAF-style dispatch receipt PDF when you check in. If your phone dies mid-flight, the wizard picks up exactly where you left off when you reopen the app.
How does Hobbstack handle no-shows and cancellations?
When a dual flight doesn't start on time, Hobbstack pings the instructor to check in. From there they can start the flight, report a no-show (which auto-bills the pilot at the percentage your organization sets), or mark it a weather or mechanical cancellation, which is forced to no charge. Late cancellations can also be configured to incur a fee, with the cutoff window and the percentage both yours to set. Every outcome is recorded on the reservation so nothing falls through the cracks.
Does Hobbstack work on mobile?
Yes. Hobbstack runs in any modern browser on iPhone, iPad, Android, and desktop — there's no app-store download to wait on. Add it to your home screen and it opens like an installed app, and it keeps working offline after the first load.
How does billing work?
When a flight is checked in, Hobbstack auto-generates a USAF-style dispatch receipt with separate line items for aircraft rental (wet, dry, block, or tach-based), instructor flight time, ground instruction at its own rate, fuel, and oil. Members can see their balance and download receipts; staff can issue statements and charge open balances in bulk. Optional extras: a one-way QuickBooks Online link that pushes invoices and customers into your ledger (payments aren't pushed yet), per-category tax rates so rental, instruction, ground school, fees, and no-show charges can each be taxed differently, and recurring membership dues, which post to each member's account every month for you to collect. Balance limits are optional too — warn a member, or block their next booking, once their balance passes a threshold you set. Partnerships use the same line-item engine for the monthly cost-split job that allocates each flight's true cost across co-owners, and solo-owner organizations usually skip billing setup entirely, since there's nobody to invoice.
What is the member service fee?
It's your organization's own optional fee: a percentage you can add to what your members are billed. It's off by default, capped, and set in Org Settings, and it only applies where a card is actually the collection method. Some organizations use it to offset the processing fee Stripe charges on their own Stripe account; the percentage is yours to choose. It also isn't taxed: the fee is excluded from the taxable subtotal, so a member never pays sales tax on it. The whole fee belongs to your organization; it isn't a Hobbstack charge.
Can my members pay me through Hobbstack?
Yes — optional, and off until you turn it on. Once your organization connects a Stripe account, members can save a card on Stripe's own payment page (Hobbstack never sees the card number) and your front-desk staff can charge open balances per-flight or in bulk. Each charge is created on your organization's own Stripe account, settles there, and pays out to the bank account you connected, on Stripe's normal payout schedule. The money is in Stripe's custody the whole way and never sits in a Hobbstack bank account, and Hobbstack adds no markup — that part is permanent. Stripe's processing fee comes out of your organization's own Stripe account, at the rate Stripe sets and publishes for your account — a cost your organization pays to Stripe, with nothing from Hobbstack added on top of it. You choose the name your members see on their card statement, and we set it on your Stripe account when you connect — if your organization connected before we started doing that, ask us to set it, so members don't see a name they don't recognise. Because cards are entered on Stripe's page and never on ours, your organization stays on the payment-card industry's shortest security questionnaire, the one known as SAQ-A. Full language in Terms section 5.4.
If a member reverses a payment, who's out the money?
Your organization. Because member payments are charged on your organization's own Stripe account, your organization — not Hobbstack — bears the cost when a member reverses one. When a member asks their card issuer or their bank to pull a payment back — on a card that's called a chargeback — Stripe deducts the reversed amount, plus its own dispute fee, out of your Stripe balance, and it does that the moment the reversal is opened, before anyone has decided who was right. Hobbstack doesn't advance, cover, or reimburse those amounts. The underlying charge is your organization's, and settling it with the member is your organization's to do; the disputed charge is flagged in your billing records so you can find it. One asymmetry worth knowing: a reversed card payment can be answered with evidence through Stripe, and Stripe decides the outcome. A payment reversed out of a bank account generally can't be — the bank networks treat those as final, with no appeal — so that one is settled with the member directly. Full language in Terms section 5.4.
What happens if a member's card is declined?
The charge fails and the balance stays open — nothing is written off, and the charge stays on the member's account where both of you can see it. Hobbstack does not retry a declined card on its own and does not email the member about it; your front-desk staff see the failure in the batch result and can re-run the charge once the member has sorted it out. If you've turned on balance limits, it's the unpaid balance crossing your threshold that eventually warns the member or blocks their next booking — the decline on its own doesn't. One safeguard worth knowing: if a member updates their card and you charge again straight away, Hobbstack makes sure they aren't handed a stale decline from the earlier attempt.
What's a dispatch receipt?
A printable, USAF-style receipt auto-generated when each flight completes. Faithful to the form aero clubs and flight schools have used for decades — Hobbs/tach begin and end, day/night takeoffs and landings, precision and non-precision approaches, training type (T1/T2/T3), instructor name, line items, totals, signature line, and your organization's branding. Email-delivered to the pilot, downloadable on demand, and printable either single (portrait, member only) or double-up (landscape, accounting copy + member copy with a perforated cut guide). Eliminates the manual dispatch-computer entry step CFIs would otherwise do at the front desk after every flight.
How does maintenance tracking work?
Hobbstack monitors 100-hour inspections, annual inspections, and oil changes using your actual flight data — not a static schedule. The forecast accounts for completion rate (how many bookings actually fly), per-cause cancellation patterns (weather vs. no-show vs. mechanical), variance over time, and even seasonal trends. Instead of saying "due June 17" it gives you a range — "expected June 8 – June 24", an 80% confidence window — so you can prep with realistic lead time. Cycle-based maintenance (parts that wear on landing count, not hours) is tracked separately, Airworthiness Directives (ADs) and Minimum Equipment List (MEL) deferrals are first-class, and a full work order system handles the labor time clock, parts, costs, and Inspection Authorization (IA) sign-off.
Can I import a student's paper logbook?
Yes. A CFI photographs or scans the paper pages, and Hobbstack holds each page on screen beside the entry form so the rows are keyed straight off the image — no flipping between a book and a keyboard, and no separate spreadsheet. Every committed entry carries the source page label and line number it came from, so the import is auditable afterward. Automatic transcription is not switched on yet, so budget entry time per page rather than review time.
What happens to my reservation if an aircraft gets grounded?
When a squawk is filed with a grounding flag, Hobbstack auto-cancels future reservations on that aircraft and notifies the affected pilots and their instructors. Resolving the squawk puts the aircraft back in service, but it does not put those cancelled reservations back on the schedule — someone re-books them, which also means a booking made during the grounding window is never disturbed. The standby waitlist is the part that runs itself: when a slot opens up, the next pilot on standby is offered it by push notification and email, and if they don't take it the offer cascades to the pilot behind them.
Is my data secure?
Yes. Your sign-in token lives in a cookie the browser won't hand to JavaScript, so a script on the page can't read it and it's never kept in ordinary browser storage. Access is capability-based rather than role-name-based, which means a customized admin role can't quietly slip past a check. Traffic is encrypted in transit and sign-in endpoints are rate-limited. Tokens for the services you connect — your QuickBooks Online link, for example — are encrypted with a key specific to the environment, and the app refuses to start if that key is missing, so a leaked database copy on its own can't be used to charge cards or push invoices. For online payments, cards are entered on Stripe's own page: Hobbstack never sees the card number, the security code, or the expiry date, which keeps your organization on the payment-card industry's shortest security questionnaire, the one known as SAQ-A. Offline data sits in a database on your own device, marked so the browser won't quietly evict it. Two things we'd rather name than blur: encryption of stored data and backups are handled by our hosting platform, not by Hobbstack's own code. For the full picture — including FAA AC 120-78B electronic records compliance, what our Part 141 training records do and don't cover, what our weather briefings include and what they don't, our data retention behavior, and CCPA/GDPR privacy coverage — see our Security & Compliance page at hobbstack.com/security.
Can I customize roles and permissions?
Absolutely. Hobbstack uses capability-based permissions. You can create custom roles with specific capabilities (scheduling, billing, fleet management, and so on) and assign them to your team members. A CFI can approve reservations they're assigned to instruct.
Can I migrate from my current system?
Yes. Hobbstack imports aircraft, member lists, logbook entries, and reservations from CSV files. There's also a dedicated importer for AeroData — the Microsoft Access dispatch database a lot of USAF aero clubs still run — that reads the aircraft records straight out of the file. Those files often contain member passwords and card numbers, so that importer is built to read only the specific tables and columns it needs; the rest is never read, never logged, and never stored. Our team can also help with data from other platforms.
Is there a REST API or webhooks?
Yes. Hobbstack exposes a read-only REST API with scoped keys — each key is limited to the specific kinds of data it's allowed to read — with rate limits of 60 requests a minute and 1,000 an hour per key. Outbound webhooks fire on reservation events, squawk events, aircraft grounded and returned to service, MEL events, and completed flights. Every delivery is signed so you can confirm it came from us, and a delivery that fails is retried with a growing gap between attempts. iCal subscription URLs are also available so members can subscribe to their flights from Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, or any calendar app that reads iCal — and it's the same URL every time, so you don't end up with duplicate feeds. API keys are currently issued on Enterprise plans; if you're on another paid plan and need them, ask us.
What kind of support do you offer?
All plans include email support at support@hobbstack.com. Enterprise plans include onboarding scoped into the quote. We're building a knowledge base and help center to help you get the most out of Hobbstack.
All-in-one aviation management — scheduling, maintenance, billing, and training in one platform, at one transparent per-aircraft price.
We're not here to surprise you with hidden fees. We're here to let you focus on flying and teaching.
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