While SO Regulations define Special Operations as "aerial military operations, aerial work, and other aviation flights (activities, operations) that are performed in accordance with rules and procedures other than those that fully comply with ICAO SARPs or other civil rules and procedures", it is not particularly useful to use this precise definition for a number of purposes. In some cases a wider classification is required, the one that includes, for example, military, governmental and other special traffic in general, regardless of the kind rules it follows on a particular flight. The SO term is very specific and only applies to the traffic that performs flights under the rules other than civil rules; it has been defined as such for the purposes of classification and distinction of IVAO flights under the SO Regulations, to delimit the area of responsibility of the HQ–SOD.

Very often the kind of traffic that performs such SO flights also performs flights under ordinary civil rules. For example, military flights very often operate under civil procedures; it would have been not entirely correct to omit such type of traffic from statistics, current (live) flights and so on. Therefore, for a limited number of purposes, where explicitly indicated as such, the term SPT (Specialised Traffic) has been introduced.

SPT flights include the following (regardless the of kind of rules that are being followed): flights operated by military operators, state flights (military, police, and customs), flights operated by governmental and international bodies, ministries, agencies, etc., flights operated on military or special–use aircraft (except retired aircraft first introduced before approximately year 1950), flights of IVAO HQ–SOD registered Special Operations Groups (SOGs), flights of not IVAO HQ–SOD registered special groups (not yet registered, but routinely performing SPT flights), all the flights performing official IVAO SO WT legs, flights performing IVAO divisional SO or SPT–equivalent tours, search and rescue operations, firefighting operations, coast guard operations, medical evacuations, humanitarian operations, construction work flights, external loads operations, human external cargo operations, hoist operations, oil spill work, avalanche mining operations, parachute operations and skydiving, special events flights, including such as flying display and competition flights, agricultural flights, news media flights, air to air filming and air to ground filming, including aerial photography flights, news media flights, television and movie flights, glider towing flights, aerial advertising flights, aerial observation flights, aerial patrol flights, aerial survey flights, animal herding flights, animal rescue flights and veterinary dropping flights, dropping or spraying from an aircraft in flight, scientific research flights, cloud seeding flights, sensational flights, calibration flights, aerial work in general, high risk operations in general, as well as training flights for the above.

The term SPT Flight is only used on this website for displaying current (live) SPT Flights operating on the IVAO network and for recent SPT Flights totals.

While the system and algorithm that identifies SPT flights is reliable, there is always a possibility that a small number of flights are either mis–identified (false positives) or not identified. Therefore, SPT figures should not be seen as absolute and totally precise. Please contact HQ–SOD if you notice possible errors with false positives and missing flights (please include the exact callsign and the date of observation).

Please note that this term does not apply to any part of the SO Regulations. SPT flights are not the same as SO flights; SPT flights include a much wider array of flights.