Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA)

Gatekeepers are Union appointed Pilots who serve a few major roles- validating data, initiating crew contacts, and most importantly, ensuring the security of identified data. Gatekeepers are the ONLY people who can connect a flight to a crew.

The process from raw aircraft data to crew contact involves collecting data, validating it, analyzing it, and then contacting the crew if appropriate. Raw flight data is uploaded shortly after the aircraft blocks in via the aircraft's WQAR. The data is sent to our FOQA vendor, SARA, to be processed. The time at which the data is uploaded, processed, and available for viewing varies but is typically within a couple hours. Once the flight data is processed, Gatekeepers begin the data validation and analysis process. If appropriate, a Gatekeeper will reach out to the crew to discuss findings and possible corrective actions.

The FOQA Monitoring Team (FMT) collectively developed a crew contact matrix which consists of pre-defined thresholds that, if met, require a crew contact. The event parameters are not able to be shared.

The current FOQA MOA is available on the APA 2118 website and G4Connect. Additional information about FOQA can be found in Advisory Circular 120-82.