Business Aviation Operations: Ensure Smoother Holiday Travel

If it’s not the classic 80s movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles that has us forever terrified of just how awful holiday travel can be, it’s last year’s holiday aviation travel meltdown that’s still fresh on everyone’s minds. With many concerned that an unspecified FAA computer glitch could cause another series of delayed or canceled flights this season sparking multiple not-so merry meltdowns, the second worst thing that could happen would be having a travel companion like Del Griffith. 

Typically, domestic air travel begins to experience an uptick as we approach October, November, and December. In 2019, TSA recorded its highest passenger screening volume in its history on the Sunday after Thanksgiving when nearly 2.9 million passengers passed through TSA checkpoints.

While business aviation has never been much of a congestion driver during the holiday season, corporate flight departments, charter companies, and commercial airlines can still prepare themselves for the worst-case scenario by ensuring their flight departments are performing at the best level possible. The time is now!

With many companies still relying on severely outdated systems, including in-house spreadsheets designed years ago to track flights, crew, and maintenance, outdated technology is not an isolated issue, nor is it the only reason organizations are falling short when it comes to operations.

Below, we’ve outlined some tasks to do ahead of the holiday season to ensure smoother business operations during this busy time of year and moving into 2024. Through Veryon’s suite of products and solutions, utilizing a more intuitive technology platform that can manage everything from maintenance tracking to manuals can help you achieve your ultimate goal — more uptime!

• Find an aviation management software company that is there for you when you need it. Let’s face it — things always go wrong at the worst time possible. Tie in spending hours on the phone just to get connected to talk to a real person instead of a robot, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Not only do you need to work with a company that provides valuable service that’s available 24/7/365, but also a company that listens to its customers and finds out the answer to questions as quickly as possible in order to get your team back to work.
  
  “We were early pioneers in 24/7/365 support from a vendor SaaS point of view, but it has been a growing trend for all vendors to be available around the clock to support their customers,” said John Koci, Manager of Customer Success at Veryon.
  
  
• Update outdated software. Now more than ever, it’s imperative for companies to be investing up front in the latest technology when it comes to tracking aircraft maintenance. Not only can human error happen easily, but most older products and solutions operate separately, and in silos, resulting in a higher probability of error. A fully integrated solution can eliminate inefficiencies, reduce costs, and increase aircraft uptime.
  
  “2023 has accelerated the move off of legacy Windows client-based and clunkier web-based software,” said Mike Profit, Chief Operating Officer for Veryon. “People are looking for solutions that help with the continued challenges of long lead time in sourcing parts and a more distributed workforce. While much of the work in aviation still happens at an airport or in the hangar and can’t fully be remote, many companies are setting up rapid response AOG operations or opening service centers. Modern cloud-based software, with mobile applications, helps make that much more straightforward.”
  
  
• Leverage Artificial Intelligence. Through machine learning, aviation software can learn from user feedback, allowing it to identify future recurring defects with increased accuracy. This is an industry game changer. It also allows for a reduction in the amount of time that maintenance control analysts need to spend recoding defects, which in turn can help them focus on other fleet maintenance issues, ensuring smoother business operations all around.
  
  “Larger customers, original equipment manufacturers, and airlines are all looking at moving toward predictive analytics,” said Profit. “Veryon is a market leader in identifying inefficiencies in maintenance activities and providing recommendations for effective troubleshooting. We focus on unscheduled maintenance activities, but airlines track many more dimensions of data including scheduled maintenance, aircraft operations, people operations, ground/airport operations, air traffic control, and routing. Veryon provides unique insights that are valuable in the broader context of increasing aircraft readiness.”
  
  
• Integrate your current software. Are you still using different providers for flight operations, maintenance tracking, and inventory management? As airlines continue to experience snafus with technology, the need for efficient operations and maintenance becomes more of a necessity for aviation teams of all types. An all-in-one solution can offer streamlined processes, improved visibility, reduced costs, predictive maintenance, improved collaboration, and reduced errors. 

What types of solutions does Veryon offer?

From business aviation teams and MROs to airlines and OEMs, Veryon’s suite of products and solutions can help your team finally get its aircraft more uptime! Below, we’ve highlighted our different solutions.

Maintenance Tracking: Get instant access to all your aircraft information in one simple dashboard. Streamline aviation maintenance and compliance with aircraft maintenance tracking software that automates workflows, scales reporting, and advances mobile access.

Inventory Management: Inventory management is critical to the success of any business. This integrated app delivers real-time information, allowing your team to take action on requests, purchasing, core exchanges, and more. You’ll also get a complete view of current stock levels, orders, requests, and shipments, and color-coded tiles allow you to easily see expiration, repair, request, and order status at a glance, allowing users to go directly to a detailed list of items and orders.

Work Center: Need to service more aircraft or maximize fleet potential? With a solution that is designed to deliver integrated and optimized aircraft maintenance tracking, inventory, service center management, and operations software, Work Center will allow your team to gain real-time visibility into your data across departments. Expedite return-to-service with a unified platform that leverages the combined power of maintenance tracking, parts procurement, and invoicing.

Flight Operations: When it comes to managing all aspects of a flight, schedulers, and dispatchers need things to move effortlessly. With Flight Operations, you’ll experience enhanced communications, streamlined data flow, and flight scheduling and trip planning moving smoothly.

Technical Publications: With access to over 1,700 libraries across 90 airframes, engine, and equipment OEMs, Technical Publications is a centralized resource that empowers users with seamless web, mobile, and desktop access to all the essential publications required for their maintenance and missions.

Defect Analysis: A 2023 winner in the Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards program presented by the Business Intelligence Group, Defect Analysis is the complete solution for the automatic identification of chronic aircraft problems, recurring defect resolution management, and defect analysis to improve your aircraft uptime.

Guided Troubleshooting: Trusted by manufacturers and aircraft operators around the world, Guided Troubleshooting allows organizations to monitor, maintain, and collaborate on all unscheduled maintenance. It also helps technicians significantly improve fix rates and reduce overall equipment downtime and total repair costs, the first time, by using a smart diagnostic reasoning engine that continually optimizes the aircraft troubleshooting process.

As we gear up for the last few remaining months of the year and the busy holiday season, now is the time to make sure your operations and teams are operating in full force. Be proactive and start implementing these changes today to ensure smoother business aviation operations. Remember, no one wants to be involved in a cross-country adventure involving planes, trains, and automobiles! Contact our team today for a free demo.