MCP Server for Flying Clubs and Aircraft Partnerships
Pilot-Next runs a remote MCP server. Connect Claude, ChatGPT or any other MCP-aware assistant to your club and ask it to find a free slot, book the aircraft, close out the flight, or tell you when the annual is due — in plain language, with the same permissions your own account has.
What is the Pilot-Next MCP server?
The Pilot-Next MCP server is a remote Model Context Protocol server at https://pilot-next-backend.onrender.com/mcp that gives an AI assistant direct access to a flying club or aircraft partnership running on Pilot-Next.
It exposes 17 aviation tools — booking, availability, Hobbs and Tacho hours, flight settlement, account balance, maintenance forecasts and METAR — over Streamable HTTP, behind OAuth 2.1. There is nothing to install: it is a hosted server, not a package you run on your laptop.
The Model Context Protocol is an open standard, originally published by Anthropic, for connecting AI assistants to external tools and data. Instead of a bespoke integration per assistant, one MCP server serves them all.
Connection details
| Server URL | https://pilot-next-backend.onrender.com/mcp |
|---|---|
| Transport | Streamable HTTP (remote). Legacy HTTP+SSE clients are served at /mcp/sse and /mcp/messages. |
| Authentication | OAuth 2.1 with PKCE and dynamic client registration (RFC 7591). Bearer token in the Authorization header. |
| Discovery | /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server and /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource |
| Scope | mcp |
| Tools | 17 (5 write, 12 read-only) |
| Install step | None. It is a remote server — there is nothing to download, clone or run locally. |
Values read from the server's own discovery document on 9 September 2026.
Which tools does the Pilot-Next MCP server expose?
Seventeen, in four groups. Twelve are read-only. Only three change anything a pilot would notice — create_booking, cancel_booking and settle_booking — and each of those runs the same validation as the web app.
| Tool | Read / write | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Booking & scheduling | ||
get_my_bookings | Read | Upcoming and past bookings for the signed-in pilot. |
find_available_slots | Read | Free windows for an aircraft over a date range — "when is the Cessna free next Friday morning?" |
get_aircraft_availability | Read | Real-time availability for one specific aircraft. |
create_booking | Write | Reserve an aircraft for a time window, with the same conflict checks the web app uses. |
cancel_booking | Write | Release a booking you own. |
| Aircraft & maintenance | ||
get_aircraft_hours | Read | Current Hobbs and Tacho readings on the airframe. |
get_maintenance_forecast | Read | When the next 100-hour, annual or recurring inspection falls due, in hours and in days. |
get_flight_statistics | Read | Monthly and yearly aggregates for a pilot or an aircraft. |
get_pilot_activity | Read | Activity summary for a pilot over a period. |
| Money & settlement | ||
get_my_balance | Read | Current account balance plus the ledger history behind it. |
estimate_flight_cost | Read | Pre-flight cost estimate from the aircraft rate that applies to you. |
get_unsettled_bookings | Read | Flights that have been flown but not yet closed out. |
preview_settlement | Read | Full cost breakdown for a flight before anything is charged. |
settle_booking | Write | Close out a flight end to end: log the hours, price them, book the invoice line. |
get_booking_settlement_info | Read | Breakdown of a flight that has already been settled. |
| Flight context | ||
get_weather | Read | METAR and TAF for any reporting station. |
get_dispatch_context_and_time | Read | Current time, time zone and dispatch context, so the assistant does not guess at "next Friday". |
How do I connect Claude to my flying club booking system?
Four steps, once:
- In your assistant, add a custom connector and paste the server URL
https://pilot-next-backend.onrender.com/mcp. - Sign in to Pilot-Next in the browser window that opens.
- Approve the connection. The client registers itself, so there is no client ID or secret to copy.
- Ask it something — “when is the Cessna free for three hours on Friday morning?”
You need a Pilot-Next account for the club whose data you want to reach. The assistant inherits your permissions exactly — it cannot see a booking, a balance or an aircraft that you could not open in the app yourself.
Is it safe to let an AI assistant reach my club aircraft data?
Every MCP call runs through the same permission checks as the web application. A pilot sees and changes only their own bookings and their own balance; an administrator sees their own company and no other.
The Bearer token is separate from the web session, carries the mcp scope and nothing else, and dies the moment you disconnect the assistant. Twelve of the seventeen tools cannot change anything at all, and a settlement can be inspected with preview_settlement before a cent is booked.
More questions
Which AI assistants work with the Pilot-Next MCP server?
Any client that speaks the Model Context Protocol over Streamable HTTP and supports OAuth 2.1 remote servers. That includes Claude (desktop and web), and other MCP-aware clients and agent frameworks. Older clients that only speak HTTP+SSE are served on the legacy endpoints /mcp/sse and /mcp/messages.
Can I build my own integration on the Pilot-Next MCP server?
Yes. The protocol is open and the endpoint is the same one our own clients use — a Slack bot for a syndicate, a cockpit voice assistant or a month-end settlement script all connect the same way. The tool names and behaviour on this page are the contract.
Does the MCP server replace the Pilot-Next app?
No. It is a second way in, not a second system. The same bookings, invoices and maintenance records are behind it, so a flight booked by an assistant appears in the web app immediately, and a flight settled in the web app is gone from get_unsettled_bookings straight away.
New to Pilot-Next? Start with the aircraft partnership and flying club platform itself, read the longer write-up in Introducing MCP: talk to Pilot-Next from Claude, or see how the platform compares in 12 flying club management tools with verified pricing.