Maintenance

Gantt timeline, component time tracking, scheduled maintenance with AD-aware N/A handling, future expense forecast, oil analysis trend chart, squawk management, and a bookmark-driven Documents library — the full maintenance picture on the web dashboard.

Overview

The Maintenance page on the web dashboard gives Owners, Admins, and Mechanics the full picture of an aircraft’s maintenance status, all on one screen: a 12-month Gantt view, life-limited component tracking, scheduled-item management with AD-aware handling, a forward-looking expense forecast, open squawks, an oil-analysis trend chart, and the group’s documents library. Everything stays in sync with the mobile app in real time.

Maintenance dashboard with Gantt timeline, component tracking, and scheduled items

Groups managing more than one aircraft see a “Showing: [tail numbers]” aircraft picker at the top of this page — the same picker used on the mobile app (see The Aircraft Picker). Every widget on this page scopes to the picked aircraft — the Gantt timeline, component tracking, scheduled items, expense forecast, and open squawks — except Documents & Records, which stays group-wide since manuals are shared across the whole fleet.

Showing: aircraft picker tab strip at the top of the web Maintenance page

Maintenance Timeline (Gantt)

At the top of the page, a 12-month Gantt chart plots every scheduled maintenance item across a forward-looking timeline. Each item is represented as a colored dot at its predicted due date:

  • Green — current, not due in the near term
  • Orange — due within 10 hours or 10 days
  • Red — overdue

Items are grouped by category (Airframe, Powerplant, Accessories, Other) and a dashed blue Today line marks your current position so you can see at a glance what’s behind you, what’s coming up, and where things cluster. It’s the right view for seasonal planning, deciding whether to bundle several items into one shop visit, or spotting an item you’ve forgotten about.

The Gantt itself is read-only — for edits, scroll to the Scheduled Maintenance section below.

Component Time Tracking

Track time-in-service for major components that have a Time Between Overhaul (TBO) or hard life limit. Typical use cases:

  • Engine — TBO published in your engine manual
  • Propeller — overhaul interval by hours and/or calendar years
  • Vacuum pump, magnetos, alternator, governor, accessories — anything with a finite service life that isn’t already covered by a scheduled item

Each component shows:

  • Name — what it is (e.g., “Engine”, “Prop”, “Vacuum Pump”)
  • TBO — the total hours before overhaul or replacement
  • Hours Used — hours accumulated since the last overhaul or zero point
  • Progress bar — color-coded (green when healthy, orange approaching TBO, red near or past the limit)

Click + Add to track a new component. This is useful for components your scheduled-maintenance list doesn’t already touch but you don’t want to be surprised by — e.g., a vacuum pump quietly accumulating hours toward replacement.

Scheduled Maintenance

The full list of active maintenance items — the same items the mobile app shows, but with more room to review and manage them in one sitting. Each item shows its name, category, next due date or tach reading, and a current status badge (Current, Due Soon, Overdue).

Actions available from the web:

  • + Add Item — create a new maintenance item with a name, category, interval, and trigger (calendar-based, tach-based, or both)
  • Edit — update an item’s details, interval, or due date
  • Complete — log a completion with date, tach, and notes; 5-by-5 calculates the next due date automatically
  • Mark N/A — file the item away as not applicable to your specific aircraft

Why Mark N/A exists

Many maintenance items don’t apply to your specific aircraft, and the most common case is Airworthiness Directives. The automatic AD import (on the mobile app) pulls every AD published for your make, model, and engine — but most ADs are scoped to specific serial-number ranges, sub-models, or installed equipment, so a meaningful share won’t apply to your individual aircraft. Rather than have them noisily flag overdue, use Mark N/A to file them cleanly.

N/A items aren’t deleted — they’re set aside so they don’t reappear on future AD/SB syncs, and you can restore one from the Not Applicable section if circumstances change (e.g., an avionics retrofit brings a previously-irrelevant AD into scope). The web page exposes the same N/A list and restore action as the mobile app.

Web vs. mobile parity

The mobile Maintenance Tracking page handles the same items end-to-end and is what your A&P typically uses on the hangar floor. The web page is the better tool when you want to plan across a year, edit several items in one sitting, run the AD-import follow-up triage, or reconcile alongside the Finances expense forecast.

Future Maintenance Expenses

A forward-looking list of anticipated maintenance costs across roughly the next 6 months, drawn from your Planned Expenses. Any planned expense whose category is Maintenance (or a Maintenance-adjacent category like Annual Reserve / Engine Reserve) and whose date falls in the upcoming window appears here automatically. Useful for budget planning and timing the annual inspection alongside other large items.

If a row here looks wrong — amount changed, date moved, no longer relevant — update it on the Finances page; the change reflects here on next load.

Active Squawks

Every open squawk reported across mobile and web shows up here with severity badge, description, optional photo, the reporter’s name, and the date filed. Who can do what matches the app exactly:

  • + Report — anyone in the group. When filed, the same squawk alert email goes out to the whole group — mechanics, maintenance officers, owners, and admins on the To: line, every other member CC’d.
  • Edit and Delete — whoever reported the squawk, plus Owners and Admins. Edit updates the description, severity, or photo. Delete asks you to confirm first.
  • Resolve — Owners, Admins, A&P Mechanics, and the Maintenance Officer. Mark a squawk as resolved with resolution notes and an optional photo; resolved squawks move to a collapsible Resolved history below the active list.

Resolving a squawk emails the whole group (and puts a copy in everyone’s Notification Center), saying Back in service when nothing else is grounding the aircraft. Deleting an open squawk tells the group it was withdrawn. Whoever resolved or deleted it isn’t sent their own notice. See Squawk Reporting → Resolving Squawks.

Resolved squawks aren’t deleted — they remain as searchable history so you can spot recurring patterns (“the magneto’s been replaced twice in eight months — let’s investigate the harness”).

Maintenance windows

A grounding squawk takes the aircraft out of service for a span of time and puts affected bookings on standby. The full concept is in Squawks; this is what the dashboard adds.

If you’re an Owner, Admin, A&P Mechanic or Maintenance Officer, reporting a squawk with severity Grounding reveals:

  • Estimated back in service — the return date. Setting it here counts as confirming it.
  • This is planned work, not a defect — ticking this marks it as scheduled maintenance rather than a fault, and reveals an Out of service from date so you can book it for a future week.

Editing an open grounding squawk shows the same fields, and tells you whether the current date has been confirmed by a person or was filled in automatically.

Members without a maintenance role see the squawk form exactly as it has always been.

Planned maintenance can also be booked from the calendar on the Flights page with Take the aircraft out of service, and a window’s dates can be adjusted there — see Flights → Taking the Aircraft Out of Service.

Reporting planned maintenance from the dashboard

Resolving a squawk ends the window and emails everyone whose flight was affected. Deleting one does the same, but says the window was filed in error rather than announcing a repair — use Delete when a squawk shouldn’t have been filed, and Resolve when the work was actually done.

Severity ladder

  • Minor — informational, no immediate action required (“Slight oil seep at the prop hub, monitoring”)
  • Monitor — watch and re-evaluate (“ELT showing 70% on the test light, replace at next 100hr”)
  • Grounding — the aircraft is not airworthy until resolved. Filing a Grounding squawk triggers a red banner on every group member’s home screen so no one tries to book or fly the aircraft.

See Squawk Reporting for the full lifecycle, photo handling, and email-notification routing.

Oil Analysis

Oil analysis is one of the cheapest early-warning systems for engine wear — a sudden jump in iron usually signals cam or lifter wear; an aluminum spike points at piston ring or bearing degradation; copper trending up over multiple samples can indicate bearing material breaking down. Logging oil samples here lets you spot trends before they become engine replacements.

Oil analysis trend chart alongside the group's documents library

Each sample entry includes:

  • Sample date and tach reading
  • Lab results — iron, aluminum, copper, nickel, chromium, silver and silicon (ppm). Samples imported from a lab report also keep lead, tin, the other elements and the oil properties the lab measured.
  • Status and diagnosis — the lab’s verdict (Normal, Caution, Abnormal or Severe) and its recommendations

5-by-5 plots the results as a trend chart so you can see whether wear metals are stable or trending up over time.

Importing a lab report

Click Import Lab Report and choose the PDF your lab emailed you. 5-by-5 reads Aviation Oil Analysis (ALS Tribology) and Blackstone Laboratories reports. Each report also repeats your earlier samples, so one report can fill in several at once, and you can choose more than one file.

Nothing is saved until you’ve reviewed it:

  • Every value is editable, so fix anything that doesn’t match the report.
  • Tach at sample is filled in for you from your flight log, or from the report’s hours since overhaul.
  • Samples you’ve already saved, and samples from before your engine’s last overhaul, start unticked.
  • Blackstone reports don’t give a status, so 5-by-5 suggests one from the lab’s comments. Change it if you read them differently.

Click Import Selected to save the ticked samples. If 5-by-5 doesn’t recognize the file, it tells you. Enter the results with + Add Sample instead, or email the report to support@fly5by5.com and we’ll help.

To enter a result by hand, click + Add Sample.

Documents & Records

The Documents & Records widget is your on-the-airplane reference library: bookmarked operating manuals, group-uploaded paperwork, and a searchable catalog of 130+ aircraft, engine, and avionics manuals. The widget is organized into three sections within one panel.

Operating Manuals & Guides

The manuals you’ve bookmarked from the public catalog — POH/AFM, engine manual, avionics operating manuals, and supplements that apply to your specific aircraft. Bookmarked items appear here at the top of the widget so they’re one click away rather than buried in the catalog browse below.

Group Documents

A search-and-upload area for your group’s own files: annual inspection signoffs, AD compliance records, 337 forms, logbook scans, weight & balance updates, insurance certificates, and anything else the group wants accessible from any device. Owners and admins add files with the + Upload button (top right of the widget); everyone can use the Search documents… field to find one by filename.

On paid plans, PDFs, images, and text files you upload (and logbook pages scanned in the mobile app) are read and made searchable, so the AI Assistant can answer questions from them. Each row shows whether it’s searchable yet. The widget’s own search box matches filenames only. Scanning and search are part of the paid plans; a free trial includes 20 scanned pages. If a subscription ends, nothing is deleted: your files, scans, and their transcribed text are kept, and the documents area and search unlock again as soon as you renew.

Browse Catalog

A searchable index of 130+ publicly-available manuals covering aircraft, engines, and avionics. Manuals matching your aircraft (by make/model/engine) surface first. Click any catalog manual to view it or to bookmark it into your Operating Manuals & Guides section — bookmarking is what makes a manual show up in your library and what makes it searchable by the AI Assistant.

If you’d like to see a manual added that isn’t in the catalog, use the Suggest a document for our library link below the search box.

Important: Catalog manuals are sourced from publicly-available materials and are provided for reference only. Always obtain current, manufacturer-approved documentation for maintenance and airworthiness decisions.

Tip — what the search box actually does: The widget's Search documents… field matches filenames and titles only — it doesn't read inside the files. To ask a content question (e.g., "What's the hot start procedure for my engine?", "What's the autopilot's altitude-hold limit?"), use the AI Assistant, which reads inside the manuals you've bookmarked.

Tip — offline access: Documents are served from the cloud and require an internet connection to open. If you need access on the ramp or at a remote airport, open the document on your mobile device before you go so it caches locally.

Inviting a Mechanic

Mechanic invites are sent from Settings → Members tab → Invite a Member, with the role set to Mechanic when you address the invite. The flow is identical between web and mobile, and once added the mechanic receives squawk alert emails the same way other maintenance roles do.

Mechanics get a tailored, restricted view: maintenance items, squawks, and the scanned logbooks in the Documents Library — but not your other documents, and no access to flights, the ledger, member balances, or scheduling. See Members & Roles → A&P Mechanic Access for the full role description.

Asking AI About Maintenance

For complex questions across many items — “What’s coming due in the next 50 hours?”, “When was the last oil change?”, “What are the recommended spark plugs for my IO-550?” — the AI Assistant is often faster than scrolling through this page. It reads your maintenance items, oil samples, squawks, and the manuals you’ve bookmarked directly.