free, for good

Airline not supported? Apply for a free Ident

Ident reads easyJet eCrew rosters today. Every other airline is a format nobody has looked at yet. Help us read yours and the software is yours — free, permanently, including everything that comes after.

The deal, plainly

You give us the format. We do the work. You keep the software.

You send a sample

One roster, with your name, staff number and crew list taken out. That's enough to see how your airline lays a month out.

We write the parser

Usually a few evenings. We'll come back with questions — duty codes are never as obvious as they look.

You test it, and keep it

You run it against your real roster and tell us what's wrong. When it's right, your licence is free. No expiry, no upgrade later.

What we actually need

In rough order of usefulness.

A calendar feed

If your airline offers an .ics subscription — AIMS eCrew, CrewLink, Sabre and others do — that's the whole job, and the quickest route. Don't send us the link itself: it's a password in URL form. Tell us which system it comes from and we'll take it from there.

Or a roster PDF

The monthly one you already download. Black out your name, staff number and anyone else who appears on it. We need the shape of the page, not who you are.

Your duty codes

What your airline calls a day off, standby, positioning, training, sick. This is the part that actually takes the time, and the part only you know.

On your data. Send a redacted sample, not a live feed. We use it to write the parser and delete it when the parser works — we don't want a copy of your roster and we've built the product specifically so we never hold one. Once it's running, your roster stays on your own device, as it does for everyone else.

Apply

No form-filling marathon. Four boxes.

This is the part only you can supply, and the part that takes us longest to guess. Overwrite the examples above with yours. Anything you're unsure of, say so — a wrong guess about a code is how a standby ends up on the wall as a flight.
Then send the sample roster by email. The form above can't carry a file, and we'd rather not build somewhere for other people's rosters to pile up. Attach it to a message to support@xpdr.aero — a month's roster as you download it, with your name, staff number and anyone else on it blacked out. PDF, .ics, HTML, a screenshot of the crew portal: whatever you actually get.

What happens to it

It's read once, by a person

Your sample is opened to work out the format and write the parser. It isn't uploaded anywhere, fed to a service, or kept after the work is done.

Deleted when the parser works

Once your airline is supported the sample is deleted. Ask for it sooner and we'll delete it sooner — the codes are the useful part, not the file.

Never send the live link

Your calendar subscription URL is a password. Don't put it in the form or the email. Tell us which crewing system it comes from instead.

Honest small print

It might not be possible

Some airlines publish nothing a device can read. If yours is one of them we'll tell you straight rather than string you along.

It takes as long as it takes

This is built by a working pilot around a roster of his own. Weeks, not days — and more if your airline changes its format halfway through.

You still buy your own hardware

The free part is the software. The display and Raspberry Pi come from the usual places — see parts.