Imagine having a TripAdvisor for pilots. Real-world reports from people who’ve actually been there, flown the approach, dealt with the handler, and figured out the local quirks the hard way.

That’s exactly what Airport Spy is.

Airport Spy is a shared pool of short, practical reports on airports, ATC, and ground handling around the world. It’s built from first-hand experience and written for crews who just want to know what to expect.

And it’s getting busy lately! Thanks to everyone who’s been filing reports and helping make it more useful for the next crew.

OPSGROUP members can read all reports in Airport Spy via the members Dashboard here.

Spy Reports by Pilots and Operators

You can help too!

When you’re back from a trip, or stuck in a hotel downroute with time to kill, take a couple of minutes to file an Airport Spy report. What you write might save the next crew a lot of hassle.

These reports are useful when you go back, but they’re even more useful for crews heading somewhere for the first time.

Good reports don’t need to be long. Think about what you’d want to know before turning final or shutting down on stand. For example:

• How was ATC to work with?
• Anything unusual about the airspace, terrain, or procedures?
• Local quirks or gotchas?
• Handling quality and coordination?
• Anything better or worse than expected?

If it stood out to you, it’ll probably matter to someone else.

Pilots and Operators can file a report here!

Spy Reports by FBOs and Handlers

Airport Spy isn’t just for crews – FBOs and handlers can file reports too. Before we launch your way, we want to know what’s really going on.

Are you open? Ops normal? Any new rules, restrictions, or changes crews should know about before they arrive?

Just imagine a crew is thinking of heading your way. They’ll have some basic data, but a report with the latest situation is really helpful. Useful topics include:

• Airport and ATC hours
• New rules or restrictions
• Entry or permit issues
• Any recent changes
• Local tips, quirks, or common traps for first-timers

Once filed, your report goes straight to the OPSGROUP community of thousands of pilots, dispatchers, and operators.

FBOs and Handlers can file a report here!

Why bother?

Because this is what OPSGROUP has always been about. Sharing real information. Speaking plainly. Helping each other out. Keeping each other safe.

If we share, we keep each other safe. That means that if you come across a new risk, a new danger, a new procedure, something weird, something unusual – tell us, and we’ll tell everyone in the group.

We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: OPSGROUP runs on you.

Almost every Ops Alert, every Daily Brief, every Weekly Bulletin starts with someone in the group sharing a snippet. A strange new procedure. A dodgy handler. A sneaky airport fee. Or something bigger such as a new airspace restriction, a strike, or a sudden airport closure. However small it feels, if you’d tell a colleague about it in the crew room, then it’s worth telling the group too.

Over time we’ve built a few ways to make sharing easier. Some of them you might know, some you might have forgotten. So here’s the updated, all-in-one guide to reporting stuff!

How to share stuff and what to send

There are a few easy ways to get things to us.

You can drop us an email at report@ops.group if you’ve spotted something useful that others need to know.

You can also send a quick WhatsApp message to +1 747 200 1993 – pictures welcome.

If you’ve got a longer tale, something that needs more than a line or two, email it to news@ops.group and we’ll turn it into an Ops Story for everyone to read. These are the war stories, the strange sagas, the “this happened to us and it might happen to you” kind of things.

And then there’s our favourite little invention: Report-A-Thing. Or RAT, for short. 🐀

Think of it as a direct hotline to the hive mind. Built back in 2024 on a trusty Commodore-64 interface (well, almost), it lets you send in quick reports without fuss. The best part is that you can choose to do it completely anonymously. No names, no back and forth. Just your info, dropped straight into the machine. We read everything that comes in, check what needs checking, and then make sure the rest of the group hears about it.

So whether you ping us on WhatsApp from the ramp, send a quick note or a longer story by email, or fire off an anonymous RAT report, the result is the same: what you’ve seen gets shared with 8,000 members worldwide. That’s how we turn one person’s weird experience into everyone’s “good to know.”

Airport Spy

Not everything fits into an email or a quick RAT note. Sometimes what helps most is simply knowing what another crew found when they flew in before you. That’s where Airport Spy comes in.

Think of it as TripAdvisor for pilots and ops teams. You land somewhere, you notice something good, bad, or just plain bizarre, and you file a Spy Report. Two minutes of your time, but invaluable for the next crew.

For pilots and operators, a good Spy Report is the kind of detail you’d share with a colleague in the crew bus. Was ATC easy to follow or impossible to understand? Was the handling slick or painfully slow? Any odd security checks or airport quirks that could catch someone out?

Pilots and Operators can file a report here!

It’s not only for pilots. FBOs and handlers can file too. Before a crew shows up at your airport, they want to know what’s new, whether hours have changed, if there are new procedures, or if there’s some local peculiarity that doesn’t show up in the AIP.

FBOs and Handlers can file a report here!

All reports go into the group dashboard, where 8,000 members can see them. The next time someone is heading to that airport, they’ll have your notes in hand and they’ll thank you for it.

Airport Spy is getting busy lately, and that’s thanks to all of you who have been filing reports!

In the end it’s simple: one small report might save another crew hours of hassle, or even something worse. Nobody knows everything, but together we know a lot.

So don’t overthink it. Just send it. We’ll do the rest.