Third party: verifying a record

01What you are holding

A third party is anyone who has no account and still has to decide about a record: an insurer, a surveyor, a lessor, an airport or an authority.

A record reaches you by three routes: a link, a PDF report and a standalone verification tool. None of them needs a login or trust in us.

After damage you may also get a claim package: one link to a pair of records, made when the aircraft was handed over and when it came back.

02Opening the link without an account

The link is issued by the aircraft operator: a manager in Groundbook, or the team member who recorded the walkaround, in the app. It is valid for 1 to 90 days, and whoever issued it can revoke it earlier.

When opening the link is logged for the holder of the record, the page says so.

1. Open the link in any browser. You do not need to sign in.
2. At the top is the verdict in large letters. If the holder included the video, it is next to it.
3. Below the verdict are the aircraft registration, the type, and when and where it was recorded.
4. At the bottom is the date until which the link is valid.
5. If the link does not work, the page says it does not exist, has expired or was revoked. Ask the holder of the record for a new link.

03What you see in the record

Next to the record you see its state. “Verified” means the record's event chain is intact and the signatures and timestamp are valid. “Sealed” means the record is sealed and the anchor is still being stored.

“Not sealed” means the record is not sealed yet and you cannot rely on it.

Next to the state you see the aircraft, the type, the kind of record, the reference, the site and when it was recorded. The kind is one of the nine kinds of record, for example “Regular walkaround”; a handover and return pair shows as “Aircraft pickup” and “Aircraft return”.

In the copy shown outside the organisation, people in the footage are blurred.

04The PDF report

The PDF report is the record in readable form. It is in the language you pick on the link page: Slovak or English.

It carries the aircraft, the type, the site, the date of the walkaround, the seal verdict, the times of recording and of receipt by the server, and the seal data.

The name and e-⁠mail of the person who recorded it are not in it. Instead there is a pseudonym that cannot be traced back from the document.

A file for verification is attached to the PDF. With it you verify the record without us.

05Verifying without us

On upload the record receives its seal: a fingerprint of the video and the data, our signature and a timestamp from an external service.

Anyone can verify it at any time with our published key, without an account, without us and even offline. It uses a standalone tool, a public key and the anchor of the timestamp authority.

The public key checks the signature; it is not an encryption key: it can only verify a signature, never create one.

The storage and the database are encrypted, and the data is in the EU, in Frankfurt.

1. Extract the attached verification file from the PDF, for example with pdfdetach.
2. From walkcheck.eu/verifier, download the verification tool, the public key and the timestamp anchor into a new empty folder.
3. Run the tool on the extracted file. It runs offline too.
4. The tool recomputes the whole event chain of the record from the beginning, verifies the signatures and the timestamp, and prints a verdict.
5. The verdict and the sealed head of the record's event chain must match what is printed in the PDF. If they do not, do not trust the document.
6. To check that the tool really checks, change one letter in the file and run it again. It must report that the record was broken.

06Handover and return in one link

After damage the question is when it happened and in whose hands the aircraft was. So the operator can send the whole pair in one link: the record made when the aircraft was handed over and the record made when it came back.

We call such a link a claim package. It opens like a link to a single record, in a browser and without an account.

You see both records, each with its own seal verdict, time and site, and a “Report (PDF)” button at each. The time between the end of the handover and the start of the return is the window in which the aircraft was not under a walkaround.

The weather (METAR) is the raw report from the airport and is not sealed. The package does not say who caused the damage.

07What the record says, and what it does not

A record says what the camera filmed during the walkaround, when and where, and that it has not changed since it was sealed.

It does not say the aircraft is in good order, or who caused any damage.

A link opens only that one record, or with a claim package one pair. It does not open other records of the aircraft or the organisation; a claim package shows only the time and place of other walkarounds between handover and return.

A third party does not receive the e-⁠mail or the name of the person who recorded it.

08Requesting access by e-⁠mail

Need a record of an aircraft that is not yours? Write to us.

The request comes to Groundbook, we pass it to the aircraft operator, and the operator decides on access.

1. Write to office@walkcheck.eu with the subject “Request for access to a record”.
2. Say which aircraft (registration), when and where (airport).
3. Say who you are (company, role) and why you need the record.
4. If the operator agrees, you receive a link that opens without an account.