Learn English – What does “in-flight” mean in this context

adjectivesmeaning

Below is the context.

Do we need to create a table to catch any in-flight data during the cut-over?

I looked the word in-flight up in several dictionaries and almost all of them state the meaning of it is:

Occurring, carried out, or present while in flight

But from the aforementioned context I think the meaning here probably is `something happened during a process". Apparently this has nothing to do with a flight. Hope some native speakers can help to confirm.

Best Answer

Yes you are correct in believing that in-flight means approximately "in progress" in this context and it has nothing to do with flying.

In this case it appears as if they are talking about upgrading back-end. During the process, the website or whatever the front end is would likely still be active making it appear as if users can still enter data, but there would be a period where that data would not be saved to the back-end.

in-flight in this context is referring to the period of time where the front-end is not linked to the back-end, and therefore the user data will not be saved. That is why they are asking if they need a table to store the data that is "caught" in-flight.

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