FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How ShiftLine plans ground handling staffing, from the flight schedule to compliant bid lines — and how it keeps your data safe.
Product
What is ShiftLine?
ShiftLine is workforce planning and shift-bid software for airline ground handling and airport operations. It turns your flight schedule and staffing standards into demand curves per workgroup, works out the FTE you need, builds bid lines with an optimization solver and checks every line against your labor contracts and laws.
Who is it for?
Workforce planning teams, station leaders and labor relations at ground handlers, airlines and airports that staff ramp, baggage, cabin, gate, ticket counter and other ground functions — especially operations with several stations, union contracts and labor laws to respect.
Where do flight schedules come from?
You can import a schedule from FlightAware AeroAPI (AirLabs and aviationstack are also supported) or upload an SSIM, CSV or Excel file. ShiftLine links arrivals and departures into aircraft turns, including overnight (RON) pairs, and shows which links are known and which are inferred.
Can we use demand curves from another planning tool?
Yes. Bid curves can be uploaded as CSV or Excel by day of week or by date, including INFORM GS Planner workload exports, and kept as versions next to curves generated from flights.
How is demand calculated from flights?
Demand rules describe how each flight creates work: staff for arrivals, departures or whole turns in ground-time windows with offsets, overnight cleaning, floating tasks the system places where they cost the fewest paid hours, passenger-driven counters sized with Erlang C service levels, and ratio or minimum rules for leads and supervisors. Applied to your schedule, they give staff and equipment needs per interval for each workgroup and function.
What do average, P85 and max curves mean?
The average curve is typical demand across the loaded dates. P85 plans each weekday on a real busy day (the 85th percentile of daily totals), and max takes the highest value seen. You choose which statistic a bid is built on.
How are bid lines built?
An optimization solver (Google OR-Tools CP-SAT) builds the lines. You can target an FTE and full-time/part-time percentage with an optional headcount, ask for exact numbers of full-time and part-time lines, or choose Most optimal: the solver meets your coverage target first, then uses the fewest paid hours. Fixed and rotating lines are supported.
Can we export the results?
Yes. Bids export as a PDF bid package, Excel or CSV, or in a bidding-system format you configure; compliance reports export as PDF; and the demand-to-bid overview exports as an Excel workbook. A REST API and signed webhooks are available for integrations.
Labor rules and compliance
Which labor rules can ShiftLine enforce?
Typed rules cover shift lengths and start times, weekly hours, rest between shifts, consecutive work days, days off, meal and rest breaks placed inside their windows by the solver, part-time caps, premiums, split shifts and meeting overlap, among others. Each rule is hard or soft, has a source, and applies at a company, law, contract, station or workgroup scope.
How does the compliance check work?
Every line is checked against the rules that apply to its workgroup. Each finding names the rule, its scope and the clause or statute it came from, so labor relations can verify it.
Can it read our union contract?
You can upload a contract or statute. If AI is enabled for your company, ShiftLine proposes typed rules with clause citations; nothing is enforced until someone with the right role approves it. Starter rule packs for US federal, California, New York and Washington rules are included as starting points, not legal advice.
Security and AI
Is our data isolated from other companies?
Yes. Every company table is protected by Postgres row-level security keyed to your company, and the application connects as a restricted database role that cannot bypass it. Roles and region, station or workgroup scopes limit what each user sees and does.
Is our data used to train AI models?
No. AI requests are sent only to providers that do not train on your data, with zero data retention on by default. AI can be turned off for your company entirely; the solver and compliance checks never use AI.
Does the AI copilot change things on its own?
No. The copilot can read your company's data and propose changes, but every change waits for an explicit Approve, runs with the signed-in user's own permissions and is written to the audit log.
Do you support single sign-on?
Yes. SSO with SAML or OIDC (for example Microsoft Entra ID or Okta) is supported, along with email and password sign-in.
Getting started
Can we try it before talking to anyone?
Yes. Sign up, create a workspace and choose demo data: a sample company at DFW with two weeks of flights, staffing standards, a demand run with bid curves and Q1 bids, four stations, three union contracts and labor rules. Or start with the setup guide and your own data.
How much does ShiftLine cost?
Pricing depends on your stations and workgroups. Request a demo and we will talk it through with you.
Still have a question?
Request a demo and we will answer it with your own schedule and contracts, or read about ShiftLine security and data protection.
See ShiftLine with your own flights and contracts
Book a walkthrough with your schedule, demand standards and labor rules, or start right away in a workspace with demo data.