The Groundbook standard

01One sentence

Everything on the ground in aviation has a sealed history that everyone it concerns can see, and that anyone can verify without us.

Whoever is on a record sees it. The owner of a thing decides who gets access to its history, and for an aircraft that is its operator. Verifying needs neither an account nor us.

A record can be about an aircraft, ground equipment, a place, or a flight and work. Groundbook is a register, not a supplier's app.

02Three layers

Walk-⁠Check records. Whoever is at the scene films or photographs it on a phone, and on upload the record is sealed.

Groundbook keeps and shares. It is an independent third party between the companies and keeps the history encrypted in the EU.

Verification is open: at any time, with our published key, without an account, without us and even offline.

03The subject of a record

The subject of a record is anything on the ground, not only the aircraft. There are four subjects.

Aircraft: an airliner, ACMI, a helicopter, a business or a club aircraft. The app recognises it from a task from Groundbook, from the location and from the registration.

Ground equipment: stairs, loaders, tugs, GPU, de-⁠icing and fuel. The app recognises it from the QR tag on the equipment or from a task.

Place: a stand, apron, hangar or gate. The app recognises it from a task, from the QR code at the stand or from the location.

Flight and work: a flight, an aircraft turnaround and a work card. The app recognises them from a task from the flight plan or from maintenance.

One record belongs to everything it concerns: the aircraft, the equipment, the place and the flight.

04Kinds of record

There are nine kinds of record. For each one: who makes it and what it carries.

Aircraft walkaround: done by a technician, pilot, crew member or ramp agent. It carries the state of the aircraft on arrival, before departure or before flight, sector by sector for the aircraft type. On arrival it can also be a short arrival snapshot: a few shots and one confirmation, seconds.

Guided check: done by a technician, mechanic or crew member. A voice reads the organisation's checklist, the person confirms a point or goes back to it, and the camera can be on the head.

Final walkaround after maintenance: done by a maintenance technician. It carries the check that no tools or foreign objects are left on the aircraft and that the panels are back on (EASA Part-⁠145, 145.A.48).

Aircraft turnaround: done by ground handling. It carries arrival and departure, the state of the aircraft before and after servicing, and the equipment at the aircraft.

Equipment check: done by the equipment operator at the start of a shift. It carries the condition of the equipment and any finding.

Stand check: done by the airport or ground handling before arrival and after departure. It carries foreign objects and the condition of the apron.

Report: filed by anyone at the aircraft, and by the public via a QR code at the airport. One tap, a photo or a video is enough, and the report goes to the right person.

Handover and return: concerns the operator, the lessor and the insurer. It carries a pair of records and one link, so old damage can be compared with new damage.

Finding and repair: belongs to maintenance and the workshop. A finding is an item with its own history, the decision carries a name, and then come the repair and the final walkaround.

05Why: the check is required, the record is not

Ground checks on the aircraft are required. The walkaround on arrival and before departure usually sits in the handler's basic service. Some airports require it before any equipment comes near the aircraft.

The pre-⁠flight inspection is done by the pilot in command. Nobody has to record it.

What a check leaves behind is not required. A tick on a list remains, not what the person saw. When a dent is found at the next station, nobody can say at which turnaround it happened.

The standard changes this in one sentence: every required ground check leaves a sealed record that can be verified without us.

06Three loops worth paying for

Money: damage, who, when, where. When damage happens on the ground, the airline, the handler and the insurer dispute who is responsible. A record on arrival and before departure narrows the window in which the damage happened to one station.

Time: from report to repair. A finding reaches the right person with the history of the place and the aircraft. Found earlier means a smaller repair and less time on the ground.

People: knowledge for the next generation. Older technicians retire and what they know is not written down. In a guided check it is written down at the exact point, and a new technician goes through it the same way.

07Who writes the rules

The standard is not a law. It applies by contract, and the rule is written by whoever carries the risk.

The airline carries the risk for the aircraft. Its rule belongs in the contract with the handler and in the ground operations manual.

The airport carries the risk for the apron and the terminal. Its rule belongs in the apron regulations.

The handler carries the risk for its people and equipment. Its rule belongs in its own procedures and training.

The lessor carries the risk for the asset. Its rule belongs in the terms of handover and return.

The insurer carries the risk for the loss. Its rule belongs in the policy terms.

08Roles in the standard

Records: a ramp worker, a team leader, a newcomer, an equipment operator, a maintenance technician, airport security, a pilot, whoever hands an aircraft over, whoever takes it, and anyone in the terminal via a QR code. They create the record in Walk-⁠Check.

Decides: a qualified person on the owner's side, for example MCC or the head of maintenance. They accept or change a proposal, and the decision is recorded with who made it.

Reads: OCC, MCC, security, the station manager, the airport operator, the fleet owner, a lessor, an insurer, an auditor, an authority, an investigator, a workshop and a buyer. They find and verify it in Groundbook, or receive a link.

Writes the rule: the airline, the airport, the handler, the lessor and the insurer. They set what is recorded, when, and by when.

A maintenance technician's record complements the work card and the certificate of release to service. It does not replace them.

09Schedule: who records, and when

Aircraft on stand: the handler's team does the arrival walkaround at the turnaround. They do it before any equipment arrives.

Before departure: the handler's team does the walkaround before the aircraft leaves the stand (off-⁠block).

First use of equipment on a shift: the equipment operator does an equipment check before using it.

Before arrival and after departure: the airport or ground handling does a stand check before the aircraft takes the stand (on-⁠block), and after departure. The record carries foreign objects and the condition of the apron.

Someone sees something: anyone files a report with a photo, straight away, before the aircraft moves.

A problem is reported: a qualified person of the owner decides before the next departure. The decision is recorded with who made it.

A new person: the team leader does a guided check and confirms it before the new person works unsupervised.

Handover of an aircraft: a full walkaround is recorded at handover and at return, and the two records form a pair.

The owner of a thing decides who sees a record, and for an aircraft that is its operator. The airport sees what was recorded on its apron. Whoever writes the rule sets the exact timing in the contract.

10Rules of a record: making and sealing

A record is made at the source and receives its seal on upload. Nobody changes it silently, us included.

Every record says what, on which item, where, when and by whom.

One record belongs to everything it concerns: the aircraft, the equipment, the stand, the flight and the team.

Every record can be verified without us, without an account and even offline.

An incomplete guided check is never passed off as complete: it lists the skipped points by name. A record without a seal says so on its link page.

A correction is never written over the original record. It is added beside it with the old and the new value.

Nothing is deleted silently. A deletion on request is recorded with who asked for it and when.

11The shape of a record

The shape of a record is public and the same for anyone who wants to adopt it.

A record is a chain of entries. Each entry carries its sequence number, the time the server wrote it, who wrote it (an identifier and a role), the kind of event, a fingerprint of its content and the fingerprint of the entry before it.

Every entry is signed. The head of the chain receives a timestamp from an external authority under RFC 3161, so the time of sealing does not rest on our word alone.

The video has its own fingerprint, and it belongs to the sealed data. A record sealed right after it is received has two seals: the first covers the video as the server received it, the second the blurred version and the assessment made after it.

Changing a single character in the sealed data changes the fingerprint, and verification finds it.

12How to verify a record without us

Verification needs neither us, nor an account, nor the internet. Python, three public libraries and our published key are enough.

1. From walkcheck.eu/verifier/ download the verifier, the public key and the anchor of the timestamp authority.
2. Install three libraries: cryptography, pydantic and structlog.
3. Extract the machine-⁠readable seal file attached to the PDF report (with the pdfdetach tool).
4. Run the verifier, offline if you like. VERIFIED means the chain is intact from the start, every fingerprint matches, every entry has a valid signature and the seal a valid timestamp.
5. If something has changed, the verifier says so and names the entry and the reason.
6. Test the tool: change one letter of the registration in the file and run it again. It must report the change; otherwise verification would check nothing.

13What verification says and what it does not

Verification says that a sealed record has not changed since it was sealed: the same positions, the same times, the same video, the same person.

It does not say that a part is in order. A record is what was in frame, not an assessment of airworthiness.

It says nothing about what happened before the server received the record, nor that the walkaround was complete: missing positions stay visible in the record.

14One shape for every source

The shape of a record is the same for every source of footage: a phone, a head-⁠mounted camera, Walk-⁠Check's own device with sensors, a fixed camera or a drone.

The description of the shape and the verifier are public. Anyone who wants to issue or verify records in the same shape can adopt them.

A European patent application has been filed.

15Rules of a record: people and access

The owner of a thing decides who gets access to its history. Whoever is on a record sees it. The airport sees what was recorded on its apron.

For an aircraft, the operator decides: the team sees records by role, and a third party sees what the operator shares with them.

AI proposes, a qualified person decides. Their decision is recorded with who made it.

What is measured is a finished check, not people. A record carries where it was made and the path taken during it. Outside a record, we do not track location.

In the copy shown outside the organisation, people in the footage are blurred. The hand of the person filming is not.

A report and an access request reach whoever they concern. Nobody has to know whom to write to.

16AI takes on the work

AI takes over the work nobody should do by hand. It recognises an item in the footage, such as an aircraft registration or a type of equipment.

From a report it drafts what happened, where, which part is concerned and who it belongs to. A person sends it. It translates the report into the recipient's language.

In Groundbook it understands what a person typed into a field and shows it as one sentence. It adds the right people to a problem and shows which reports are marked as blocking departure.

It suggests a decision with a reason and writes the morning summary. A qualified person decides.

17What AI never does

A record written by a model would not stand up in a dispute. So AI never seals a record and never decides.

AI never declares an aircraft free of damage.

AI never rates people and never tracks them.

AI never changes a record and is not a standalone chatbot.

18Who pays

Opening and verifying a record is always free. A third party opens the link without an account and verifies the record without us.

Whoever records, or works with the history for themselves, pays. The aircraft operator, a club, a school or the owner of a small aircraft included, pays for aircraft with a record in the month and decides who gets access to their history.

The other parties do not pay for an aircraft; they pay for a station or workspace. An airport pays for its own apron, a handler for its own equipment, a workshop when it runs its own work for several customers.

An insurer or lessor gets a single record free and pays for its own workspace across many records. Whoever pays cannot change a record.