Ascent Flight Training (Management) Ltd
Competitive Salary Full-time
A day in the life of an Operations & Scheduling Manager
We are looking for an experienced and highly capable Operations & Scheduling Manager to lead a dynamic team responsible for delivering safe, accurate and effective daily flying training schedules. Operating in a fast-paced aviation training environment, you will play a critical role in balancing operational priorities, managing risk, and ensuring that training delivery meets both safety and performance expectations. This is an exciting opportunity for a confident decision‑maker and people leader who enjoys solving complex operational challenges.
On a typical day, you might:
- Lead your Operations & Planning team to produce and validate the Daily Flying Programme, ensuring it is safe, achievable and aligned to training priorities
- Assess live operational challenges such as aircraft availability, weather, or resource constraints – making real‑time decisions to keep training on track
- Manage and mitigate risks, ensuring safety is always the top priority
- Liaise closely with instructors, training leads, and aircraft service providers to balance competing demands
- Chair planning meetings, confidently challenging and refining schedules where necessary
- Respond calmly to last‑minute changes, quickly re‑planning and communicating updates to stakeholders
- Oversee the operations desk, mission planning systems and daily flying briefs
- Lead, coach and develop your team – ensuring high performance, strong morale, and continuous improvement
- Identify opportunities to improve processes, efficiency and overall operational performance
What will make you successful?
Essential Criteria
- Strong decision‑making skills, with the ability to assess risk, analyse data and make sound judgements under pressure
- Proven people management and leadership experience, with the ability to motivate, develop and lead high‑performing teams
- Experience working in a fast‑paced, operational or safety‑critical environment
- Demonstrable ability to manage complex planning and scheduling with competing priorities
- Excellent communication skills, with confidence engaging stakeholders at all levels
- Ability to remain calm, resilient and decisive in high‑pressure and time‑critical situations
- Strong problem‑solving capability, with a proactive and solution‑focused mindset
- Experience using data or systems to inform planning and operational decisions
Desirable Criteria
- Experience in aircrew, flying operations or aviation training environments
- Previous experience within a military or defence setting
- Knowledge of flying training programmes, air operations support, or mission planning systems
- Experience managing or contributing to daily flying programmes or operational scheduling systems
If you’re a confident operational leader with strong decision‑making capability and a passion for leading teams in a dynamic environment, we’d love to hear from you.
This role is full time, 40 hours per week and provides a stable Monday to Friday work schedule.
This role requires the successful candidate to obtain Security Check (SC) clearance. For further details, please refer to the official guidance on United Kingdom Security Vetting: clearance levels – GOV.UK.
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