It's Friday evening, the forecast for Saturday is lovely, and the member with the 172 booked for the morning has just cancelled. Four people are on the waiting list for it, and somebody has to decide who gets the call. If the club wrote the answer down beforehand, it takes a minute. If it didn't, the booking secretary is about to have an awkward evening.
Here's our view. Most clubs do best with first come, first served for private hire booked days ahead, and best match for training and for anything inside 24 hours. Publish the rule and the tie-break, and shorten the offer window as the slot gets closer. Further down we take one cancellation and run it through both rules, so you can see what each one does.
What a waiting list is for#
The obvious job is turning cancellations into flying. A slot that frees up at short notice is the hardest one to fill, and an aircraft sitting on the ground on a good Saturday is income the club never gets back.
The less obvious job is measuring demand. Members who look at a full diary and quietly give up leave no trace. Members who join a waiting list tell you which aircraft, which days and how far ahead people want to fly. If the list for weekend mornings in the club's only four-seater is never empty, we'd take that straight to the next discussion about the fleet or the hire rate. Our guide to utilisation heatmaps shows how to read that demand beside the hours actually flown.
Both jobs depend on members trusting the list. Once people believe slots go to whoever is friendly with the booking secretary, they stop joining, and the list stops showing real demand. So write the ranking rule down and make sure every member can see it.
First come, first served#
The member who joined the list first gets the first offer. If they decline or don't answer, it goes to the second, and so on down.
Nobody runs it quite that purely, because the first person on the list often can't use the slot. Someone who wanted Saturday afternoon gains nothing from a Saturday morning offer. So clubs offer the slot to the first member whose request fits it, in the order they joined.
The appeal is that it's hard to argue with. It takes one sentence in the booking rules, join times are facts, and any dispute is settled by looking them up. It also rewards the member who planned ahead. Monday's request beats Thursday's.
The catch is that it doesn't care how well a request fits. A member who asked for "any hour on Saturday" sits at the top of the list for every Saturday slot. They take the first hour of a three-hour gap and leave the rest too short for anyone who wanted a proper trip.
Best match#
Here the slot goes to the member whose request fits it most closely. That means the right aircraft, the right start time, and a length that uses the slot rather than chopping it up. When two requests fit equally well, join time breaks the tie.
Best match fills aircraft better and wastes fewer offers at short notice, because the first offer goes to someone who wanted exactly that slot. It's harder to explain, though. And a member with a flexible request can be outranked again and again by members with precise ones, which gets old fast if you're that member. If you choose it, publish what "best" means and say that join time decides ties.
The same cancellation ranked both ways#
Say the club's Cessna 172 is booked for a three-hour cross-country on Saturday 14 November 2026, 09:00 to 12:00. At 18:40 on Friday 13 November the member cancels. Four members are on the waiting list for that aircraft on Saturday.
| Member | Joined the list | Asked for |
|---|---|---|
| A | Monday 08:12 | Any hour on Saturday, for circuits |
| B | Tuesday 19:30 | 13:00 to 17:00, a land-away |
| C | Wednesday 07:05 | 09:00 to 12:00, a cross-country |
| D | Thursday 21:50 | 10:00 to 11:00 |
First come, first served. A joined first and fits, so A gets the offer and books 09:00 to 10:00. B doesn't fit. C's three hours no longer fit either, because the morning has been split. D can take 10:00 to 11:00. So the aircraft flies two hours, 11:00 to 12:00 sits empty, and C, who wanted exactly what was cancelled, flies nothing. Poor C.
Best match. C's request matches the slot exactly, so C gets the first offer and the aircraft flies all three hours. A, B and D stay on the list for the next gap, with A still first in line for anything that suits an hour of circuits.
The first result is fairer to A, who planned earliest. The second is better for the aircraft and for C. Neither is wrong. The committee has to decide which matters more for each kind of booking, and then put it in writing.
Choosing a rule for each type of booking#
You don't need one rule for everything. We'd set it by booking type:
- Private hire booked well ahead. First come, first served usually feels fairest, and with days of notice there's time for offers to work down the list.
- Training lessons. Best match usually works better. A student needs a particular instructor and an aircraft they're signed off on, and a lesson offered at the wrong time is a wasted offer.
- Short-notice slots, inside 24 hours. Best match. Offering to someone who can't use the slot burns time a short-notice slot doesn't have.
- Long trips and day hire. Best match, because first come, first served will let a one-hour request split a full-day gap. That's exactly what happened to member C above.
How long an offer should stay open#
The offer window decides how many members you can reach before the slot is gone, so it should shrink as the slot gets closer.
Back to that Friday cancellation. The slot starts at 09:00, 14 hours and 20 minutes after the cancellation, and we'll assume the club sends no new offers between 23:00 and 06:00 (nobody wants their phone buzzing about a 172 at 2am).
| Offer window | Offers possible before 23:00 Friday | Notice the second member gets |
|---|---|---|
| 12 hours | 1 | 2 hours 20 minutes, from 06:40 Saturday |
| 2 hours | 3 | 12 hours 20 minutes, from 20:40 Friday |
| 1 hour | 5 (more than this list needs) | 13 hours 20 minutes, from 19:40 Friday |
A 12-hour window is generous to the first member and leaves everyone after them short. If the first member lets it lapse, the second hears at 06:40 on the day, probably while the kettle's still on. A one-hour window gets through the whole list on Friday evening. As a starting point, we'd scale the window to the notice:
- More than three days ahead: 12 to 24 hours.
- One to three days ahead: 2 to 4 hours.
- Inside 24 hours: 30 minutes to an hour.
Offers sent at 23:30 tend to expire unread. If your club doesn't want late-night offers, say so in the rules and accept that the list will reach fewer people. And make accepting quick. A link that accepts or declines in one tap gets an answer. An offer that asks the member to phone or email the office often runs out first.
What to put in the booking rules#
These belong in the booking rules, where every member can read them:
- Who may join. Only members who could book the aircraft in their own right: current membership, the right licence or certificate and rating, signed off (checked out) on type. Offering a slot to someone who can't legally fly it costs the next member their notice. Booking rules for licences, medicals and recent flying covers how to set those checks.
- The ranking rule for each booking type, and the tie-break.
- The offer window, by how far ahead the slot is.
- What declining does. Most clubs let a member decline one slot and stay on the list for others. Say so, or members will accept slots they don't want for fear of losing their place.
- What happens when an aircraft goes unserviceable or the weather closes in. A slot freed because the aircraft is grounded shouldn't be offered to anyone until it's flyable again. (In Volanti, cancelling a booking for weather or a technical problem can hold the aircraft or instructor for everyone rather than only for the member who cancelled, and when the hold is released the waiting list runs again on its own.)
- How long an entry lasts. A request for a date that has passed should drop off the list on its own.
- Who can override it. If the committee reserves the right to step in, name the person and the reason, such as a student's skills test or checkride or a maintenance check flight.
Keeping a record of offers#
Most waiting list complaints come from members who can't see what happened. Someone who has been on the list for three weekends without an offer will assume the worst, and you can hardly blame them. If you can show when they joined, which slots came up, and who was offered each one in what order, it's a short conversation. Keep that record in whatever system you use.
Waiting lists in Volanti#
In Volanti the waiting list is part of the booking diary. Members join it from the pilot portal with the aircraft and times they want. When a booking is cancelled, the freed slot is checked against the list and the member ranked next gets an email offer with a signed link to accept or decline.
You choose the ranking per booking type, first in, first out or best match, which fits the split we suggest above. Each offer is time-limited and passes down the list if it's declined or left to expire. Nobody has to sit by the phone running it. The list runs again on its own when a member declines an offer, leaves the waiting list or cancels a booking they took from it, and when a hold on the aircraft or instructor is released. An accepted offer becomes a booking, approved automatically if the booking type allows it. Booking and scheduling shows the setup.