Avinode Group

Category Archive: News: Schedaero

  1. Schedaero helps operators stay compliant after TSA changes passenger vetting process.

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    How does the new TSA directive affect US operators?

    The new Directive requires operators to go through new security protocols and use a completely new vetting process which poses several challenges for US operators. On its own, the new process is time-consuming and the directive provided a short timeline (90 days) to meet the requirements. For operators, getting an automatic integration with their FMS solution set up within the timeframe mandated has been challenging.

    How is Avinode Group able to support operators with this change?

    As a leading player in business aviation technology, we take data security seriously and prioritize supporting our customers in their work to improve privacy and data protection. We’ve been working closely with the TSA and DHS throughout the process to set up the best solution. It is very important to us that our customers own their data. Through our solutions, they are able to control it and handle it in a safe manner.

    Vetting customers quickly and accurately is critical to streamlined flight operations. Particularly with short booking lead times which are so common in our industry.

    What does this mean for the product roadmap of your flight operations team?

    Naturally, a lot of our US customers have reached out to us to get our help before the deadline. We’re excited to offer an interim solution in Schedaero that provides some time savings for operators and helps them stay compliant. Meanwhile, we are continuing to work on a best-in-class fully automated solution. It’s important that operators also work closely with their TSA contact at the FAA to make sure they have all the details about the new process and know what they need to do to comply.

    On June 22nd, we launched an export tool from Schedaero, our completely integrated FMS solution, where the data that needs to be vetted by the TSA can be easily exported and screened. We’re also working diligently to build a completely automated integration with the DHS within the coming months, so that the necessary passenger and crew data can be screened without any manual work at all.

    To learn more about Schedaero and the way we support operators to be compliant, contact [email protected].

  2. Webinar: The top 5 pain points of scheduling

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    About the webinar

    In this webinar, Sandro Chiappe & Genesis Dela Cruz (our Schedaero experts) highlights the top five pain points and key solutions you won’t want to miss.

    Topics covered includes:

    • Improving charter operations quotes
    • Removing some of the unnecessary manual processes 
    • Running an operation smoothly from start to finish
    • Bringing your scheduling system into the modern era


    Watch it here

  3. What turns good tech into great tech?

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    Truly outstanding technology is…

    • Scalable: being forced to constantly change the tech you use as your business grows is incredibly annoying. And expensive. And inefficient. The best tech continually meets your needs even as your business evolves from an optimistic start-up to an established industry giant. The Schedaero flight operations software, for example, helps operators, flight departments and private owners manage and run aircraft from a single jet to a huge fleet.
    • Bespoke:no two companies are the same. No problem. Flexible software can be adapted to support many different types and sizes of business. Just use the parts of the package you need right now. As your business expands and changes, you can start adding and using the specific extra elements you need later.

      Have you thought of using a ‘sandbox’ for bespoke software development? A sandbox is basically an isolated testing environment in which you can safely develop software, minimizing the risk of damage to your existing mission-critical systems.

    We offer a sandbox environment through our application programming interfaces (APIs). You can build unique products that suit the particular needs of your business and your clients, such as owner and passenger apps.

    • Well-connected:interconnectivity and the seamless integration of technologies is critical for any business in private aviation. Your flight operations software, for example, should ‘talk’ easily to your customer relationship management and business analysis systems. And don’t forget your external partners. Schedaero integrates with leading suppliers to the bizav industry, including Intuit’s QuickBooks accounting software, DocuSign (a leading player in the field of electronic signatures) and all Avinode Group’s platforms for operators and brokers, including Paynode.

    • Mobile:good products help you sit in your office and provide a good service to your clients. But great products help you deliver a great service to your clients from anywhere, 24/7.

      And mobile tech is not just essential in customer service. The latest Schedaero app allows pilots and crew members to manage and complete vital operational tasks on their mobile devices when traveling. From viewing new missions to checking passenger information, and from completing flight and duty logging to finding directions for fixed-base operations (FBOs), the new Schedaero crew app is a pocket-sized mission control.

    • Intuitive:great tech comes with great customer support, but great tech is so intuitive you hardly ever need that support anyway.

      Leading online stores set intuitive standards all technology should match. Next steps are clearly highlighted. Your route through the website is an easy journey to navigate. The menus use plain language, not obscure jargon and acronyms only familiar to the e-tailer. The products you use, and the products you develop in your sandboxes, should be as intuitive as possible.
    • Branded: as a broker or operator, you naturally want to impress your clients. You want innovative, customer-facing tech, branded to your business. But maybe you just don’t have the budget for cutting-edge software development. With smart use of APIs and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms, you can benefit from state-of-the-art IT without spending big money. Avinode’s ‘Full Search’ and ‘Empty Leg Search’ apps, for example, can easily be customized, so your clients use our technology and comprehensive data but only see your branding. You look impressive and you’re providing an outstanding service.

    In the end, only users can say if tech is truly ‘great’. Developers need that client feedback. We’re always looking to improve, so what do you want us to do next?

  4. A glimpse into the LATAM air charter market

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    What’s the landscape of private charter like in Latin America? Any trends you see? 

    Mexico is one of the most active countries when it comes to business aviation, they have a lot of private aircraft. Brazil is similarly active. We also have Schedaero customers in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Ecuador. There the markets are smaller, but seem to be doing well when it comes to private aviation. 

    I definitely expect Latin America to get on track with more modern markets like the US, even Europe. Especially because this day in age, it’s all about technology. For Latin America to continue to grow their markets and economies, the private aviation industry is going to be key. 

    What kind of aircraft is generally favored? 

    There are a lot of smaller jets or turbo prop aircraft that are low cost to operate and they’re efficient aircraft so there’s a lot of them down there. There’s also a lot of helicopter usage. They don’t want to spend money on the bigger aircraft so there’s a lot of usage of helicopters in the oil industry and big cities like Sao Paulo and Mexico City. 

    What do Latin American operators tend to use to coordinate their flight operations? 

    The operators use a lot of free tools like Google calendar and Excel sheets. A lot of people also communicate via WhatsApp. All these companies have group chats, where they chat with the pilots and the customers to organize flights. Then they will print out Word documents and Excel sheets to track additional information. You also hear of people faxing information. Instead of streamlining everything in a system where they have everything in one place. So my job is to help implement that mentality for them. 

    When you introduce Schedaero, how does it transform their businesses? 

    When I go to visit a new customer, I first learn how they work internally and how they have been organizing their operations so I can transition them as smoothly as possible based on their needs. Often our Latin American customers have never used a comprehensive system like this before, so I go step by step and show them how to use the system the right way, the way that will benefit them in the long term. That’s the whole point of them investing in something like Schedaero. It’s for them to track their information and use an efficient system for the long term. 

    Finally, can we get a special shout-out for operators across the region — in Spanish por su puesto! What is Schedaero in a nutshell? 

    Schedaero es la plataforma más avanzada de programación de vuelos que vas a encontrar en la industria y te va a ayudar a organizar tu flota, tus aeronaves, tus pilotos, tus pasajeros, y tus ventas. Si utilizas Schedaero vas mejorar tu operación, tus empleados van a tener una plataforma eficiente y vas a tener un aliado en mi que te va poder apoyar en este mercado Latino Americano que siempre va a cambiando.

  5. Doug Rank – Bringing Schedaero to new altitudes

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    Doug Rank, the VP of Engineering at our Portland office, was one of the very first people working to modernize business aviation during what he refers to as “the dawn of the Internet.” After running some of the early online charter sales websites, he took up the helm at Avinode in 2010 and has guiding our Oregonian engineering team towards excellence ever since. 

    You go way, way back with Avinode. How far back?

    I guess from a certain perspective I might be the employee with the most longevity at Avinode. I was one of the founders of Charter X which was started before Avinode was started, and Avinode wound up acquiring us in 2010 so I can claim to have been doing this longer than the founders of Avinode! 

    What roles have you assumed over the years?

    After Avinode acquired Charter X, I became the VP of Engineering, responsible for our Portland office. The main product we’ve been building here is Schedaero, our flight scheduling application, which I’ve been working on for 7 years since it first came to market. And in the last year we’ve done a big expansion of Schedaero so we’re just completing doubling the size of the engineering team here in Portland. 

    How has Schedaero been evolving and expanding?

    Schedaero began as a really strong product for charter sales. So if you were an operator who was selling your charter, Schedaero was very efficient at generating a lot of quotes very quickly and facilitating communication with your customer. Now for several years, our customers have been encouraging us to go deeper into the operations of the trip, which has resulted in us including more detailed aspects like pilot training requirements. 

    What makes Schedaero different from other flight operations software?

    Even as we’ve been building out deeper operational functionality, we want to maintain the ease of use that Schedaero customers love today. They value that they can hire a new person and have that person working productively in Schedaero with only a tiny amount of training, as opposed to some of the legacy desktop applications where it’s common that you have consultants come in for multiple weeks to train your staff on how to work with a very complicated program. Schedaero is very rich in functionality, but we’ve always maintained a very high standard for ease of use. 

    Can you tell us about the Schedaero mobile app? 

    The app is initially aimed at crew members. If you are pilot or a flight attendant, you’re rarely in the office. Your job is you get in an airplane and fly places. We’ve definitely heard the feedback from customers that it would be simpler if they could receive notifications of new missions through an app, be able to review their trip details on their mobile device and record their flight logs on the go. Probably within a few months we’ll have beta customers using the Schedaero app. 

  6. Schedaero boosts interconnectivity for larger operators

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    NBAA-BACE, Orlando, 15 October 2018: Leading business aviation technology company Avinode Group (Booth #4114) is announcing a series of developments to its flight operations platform Schedaero, which will enhance system interconnectivity for larger operators, integrate maintenance management solution CAMP, and enable the launch of a new mobile app.

    As larger operators recognize the importance of data sharing to drive the digitization of the business aviation industry, Schedaero is leading the charge by boosting interconnection between its products and external systems. At the same time, this enables operators to create custom integrations to business-critical systems using Schedaero’s new APIs.

    Enhancements to its APIs also mean that Schedaero is now fully integrated with CAMP. In addition, users of Electronic Advance Passenger Information System (eAPIS) will now be able to send trip data through Schedaero to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    The Schedaero app, which will be available on iPhone by the end of 2018, will benefit crew and dispatch teams by streamlining communication between the two and allowing them to track information on the fly, even without internet access. Users will be able to view and accept upcoming trips, view schedules and log expenses as well as update flight and duty logs and manage passenger check-in. In addition, the Schedaero app will integrate with the myWorld iPad app designed by World Fuel, enabling users to push data for flight planning, weather, airport search and fuel applications via the myWorld app too.

    Johan Sjöberg, EVP, Schedaero, says: “We’re advancing Schedaero’s platform integration to better fulfill the needs of larger operators. In the same way that all Avinode Group products interconnect seamlessly, we’re integrating third-party providers to ensure everything aircraft owners, operators and flight departments need to run their business is in one place. At Schedaero, we believe that data should not sit isolated in a system, but should be shared, analyzed and used for collaboration to drive efficiency.

    “Our customers requested CAMP integration and we’ve delivered. Schedaero is now fully interconnected with CAMP, meaning inputting aircraft information in either platform automatically updates the other, reducing admin time and eliminating data entry duplication. Maintenance ‘due dates’, for instance, are instantly uploaded into Schedaero from CAMP.”

    Whether users are accessing Schedaero online, via the app or through APIs, users will now benefit from both quicker access and enhanced features. Sjöberg adds: “Development on our pilot compliance functionality is also accelerating. During the fall, operators will be able to track pilot qualifications and pilot training through Schedaero. If they don’t keep up with their training, appropriate alerts will be sent.”

    The improvement to Schedaero’s offering follows targeted investment in the platform by Avinode Group, which has attracted a host of new tech talent to its Portland-based office. The company has more than doubled its Portland-based developers from 10 to 21 over the past 12 months.