Business and private aviation is in many ways a fragmented industry made up of many smaller and niche players, making it complicated to integrate with new elements of a technology stack — and to interface with applications outside it. We sat down with experts developing key tools for business aviation to learn more about how they solve these challenges.
For relatively new players in the industry, starting from a fresh sheet can be advantageous in terms of developing modern code designed to run on the latest technology and integrate with modern systems.
Michael Frießnegg, chief technology officer at business-to-business private jet marketplace VOO, tells us that the platform “is developed based on state-of-the-art web technologies and complies with the highest standards of code quality. Since the start of development in March 2021, the technologies used are consistently updated to ensure application stability and data security.”
With a ReactJS frontend featuring TypeScript integration for type safety and thus code quality, plus a NodeJS and TypeScript implementation on the backend, individual modules run on servers orchestrated by GitLab Pipelines and Kubernetes.
“Besides flight calculations, all data is stored in relational database models (PostgreSQL), which are redundantly backed up and mirrored to prevent potential data loss,” Frießnegg explains. “The entire architecture is designed for redundancy in mind and meets the highest standards in software availability. To facilitate real-time communication between operator and broker within the respective flight folders, we utilise messaging technologies in conjunction with NoSQL databases to eliminate traditional email correspondence and phone contacts from daily professional activities.”
Integration with enterprise resource planning and other wider industry systems, including FL3XX, Leon Software and Skylegs, enables more robust information flows, including for automated aircraft location synchronisation, used in pricing calculations.
Elsewhere within business aviation, STACK.aero is implementing a SaaS (software as a service) model, bringing customer relationship management (CRM) powerhouse tool Salesforce to the industry.
“More than a CRM product, STACK.aero is a business operations system, custom-built for charter sales teams, utilising the Salesforce.com platform. Architected by business aviation veterans, STACK.aero elevates sales operation to a higher level,” director of business development Catherine Buchanan tells us. “Harnessing the power of systems integration, workflow automation and process management, the STACK.aero platform provides a ‘central nervous system’ and single source of truth for a charter business. With end-to-end trip request lifecycle management features, we bring aircraft sourcing, charter sales and customer management to one platform.”
STACK.aero identified a market gap roughly a decade ago where operators were using systems like FOS (Flight Operations System from Collins Aerospace, previously Rockwell Collins) but lacked CRM integration.
“Most of these operators had two siloed systems and staff had to endure the pitfalls of double data entry. STACK.aero built a proprietary integration between FOS and Salesforce, which relieved teams of double data entry, and meant data could flow freely between the two systems,” Buchanan explains. “In 2019, STACK.aero went back to the drawing board to create a more universal business operations system that could be used by brokers and operators. Concentrating on automating workflows, managing the entire trip lifecycle in one system, and improving the customer experience; STACK.aero Gen 2 was born.”
The system’s technology stack integrates or interfaces with numerous other elements, including marketing software (Campaign Monitor, Mailchimp, Pardot), flight management systems (FOS, SchedAero), voice over Internet telephony, plus Acrobat Sign, Aviapages, Avinode and Aviowiki.
In the challenging context of integration and interfacing, Buchanan says, “one of the most important things to achieve is to have a central source of truth. Technology in aviation is incredibly fragmented. It leads many people to have multiple siloed systems with data lost between all of the systems. Building a comprehensive tech stack that is fully integrated, with one system acting as the central source of truth, is imperative to efficiency, scalability, and efficacy.”
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