Mobile Applications Case Study

About Avantair

Founded in 2003, Avantair is a fractional ownership air travel company headquartered in Clearwater, Florida. The company provides clients on-demand flights for both business and personal travel across North America, Mexico, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean. Avantair exclusively flies the Piaggio P.180 Avanti aircraft; its speed and fuel-efficiency allow it to offer premium service at low cost.

Situation

With its leading fuel economy, fly-when-you want scheduling and convenient monthly billing, Avantair makes private travel extraordinarily easy and cost effective. Yet the company was looking for ways to make some of its internal paper-based business processes more efficient. Pilots sifted through pages of travel charts and checklists to prepare for flights. Communication from cockpit to operations center by fax and phone could be more time consuming as a result of a greater lag in data transmission. Submitting flight data and paper expense receipts for invoicing was inconvenient and took a lot of time as well. To keep up with its own high standards for the operation, Avantair sought to update its processes and improve communication between pilots and office staff.

Solution

Avantair introduced tablet computers equipped with ProntoForms from AT&T for on-board document access and data entry. The company has quickly created dozens of electronic forms for pilot use when they are on the ground within this one environment. Tablets connect to back-end systems, enabling near real-time two-way transmission of flight information and operating updates while MobileIron VSP from AT&T, a mobile device management application, helps to provide a high level of security for the data. The solution cuts out wasted time and bulky paper piles, and enhances security while improving the invoicing workflow by weeks.

Business-Class, First-Class… and Avantair-Class

Avantair provides high-end private air travel to clients who don’t want to waste time. “We cater to high net-worth individuals and corporations,” said David Fitzgerald, Chief Information Officer. Avantair’s flight services cut out long security lines, layovers and inconvenient flight schedules, while providing luxury in-flight cabin conditions. Avantair’s clients can become fractional owners by purchasing shares in specific aircraft or buy flight time cards for a specified amount of flight time. Avantair is the first company of its kind to replace hourly rates with more cost-effective flat monthly fees.

High-quality customer service keeps Avantair flying around-the-clock to meet client needs. “We’re constantly flying,” Fitzgerald said. The company relies on a dedicated team of approximately 500 employees who are largely comprised of experienced flight crews, maintenance staff and 24-hour owner service professionals. Clients can call these service professionals day or night and can schedule flights up to 24 hours before their requested departure time.

Avantair has built its best-practice services around the innovative Piaggio P.180 Avanti twin-turboprop aircraft, operating the world’s largest fleet of these high-performance planes. “We’re able to take a person from point A to point B at mid-size jet speeds but in an aircraft that’s much more efficient,” said Fitzgerald. The fuel-efficient aircraft enables Avantair to offer the lowest fuel surcharge in the industry, keeping costs down while advancing the company’s commitment to environmental responsibility. The aircraft also boasts the largest cabin in its class. And with its short runway capacity, the Piaggio aircraft allows Avantair to fly to more than 5,000 private airports.

Paperwork’s Headwind

As an air travel provider, Avantair deals with a large amount of critical information, much of it required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). From aircraft and weather conditions to airport and flight fees, tracking and recording real-time data helps ensure passenger safety and comfort as well as Avantair’s business success. In the past, however, paper-based processes caused a drag in Avantair’s operational efficiency. With approach charts, operating manuals, trip sheets, expense forms, receipts and flight plans, pilots were toting bags of books and paper with them into the cockpit. Higher paper weight on board the aircraft can also add up to higher fuel use.

The company was looking for ways to make the exchange of information between pilots and in-office staff more efficient. For pilots, filing routine paperwork meant searching for a fax machine or waiting until they got home. The aircraft and flight data were not being transmitted in real-time to the company information systems. The process involved faxing in copies of receipts at the end of the day that sometimes were successfully transmitted and sometimes required the pilot to resend. The process was inefficient and vulnerable, with the possibility of misplaced receipts or an illegible fax. It also was time consuming for pilots, in-office staff and clients. On average, it could have taken Avantair up to 45 to 60 days to invoice clients for flight-day expenses.

‘Electronic Flight Bags’

Avantair decided to create a new system for electronic data collection and communication. Its goal is to move towards a paperless cockpit. Having been exposed by AT&T to the capabilities of various mobility solutions that could address its needs, the company chose a popular tablet device to run ProntoForms from AT&T for mobile forms automation and MobileIron VSP from AT&T for mobile device management.

The software turns the tablets into electronic flight bags that act as the pilots’ central resource. ProntoForms moves paperwork onto the tablets, using customizable electronic forms and device-enabled data capture. MobileIron helps manage tablet use, providing application monitoring and automated security policies. Both software programs require login with passwords, increasing the solution’s security.

ProntoForms do-it-yourself approach makes end-user programming easy. All of the forms that Avantair uses were developed in-house by end users. With ProntoForms, making form adjustments is no problem. The users are able to create as many forms as they want, whatever they need, and apply them to what’s useful to them.

After starting with a basic form for collecting the data related to weight and balance measurements, Avantair has now created 42 customized forms to transmit real-time flight information, take on-board inventory, report expenses and handle many more in-house processes. “It’s simple and easy to use and it ties in nicely with our systems,” said Fitzgerald.

Faster and Smarter Data Communication

ProntoForms connects the cockpit, through the tablet, to Avantair’s back-end systems for near real-time information updates. Tablets link to portions of the database, giving pilots easy access to pre-loaded flight details. Server updates are automatically distributed to the pilots’ tablets. “We’re able to quickly disseminate version updates and then also manage version control,” Fitzgerald said.

Streamlined communication goes both ways. The tablets enable pilots to more efficiently and conveniently send information in a highly secure fashion back to the office. “The communication is much better within the company because we have got the pilots submitting real-time data,” said Fitzgerald.

Upon landing, pilots fill in forms with pre-populated dropdown menus to document details like flight time, fuel burns and fuel purchases. Now, instead of waiting to find a fax machine, they input information directly into the electronic forms held on their tablets and push send. Within minutes, the information is off their device and into Avantair’s database systems. Pilots can even photograph expense receipts as part of the form completion.

With high-quality, near real-time information coming from just one source, business office staff work more effectively. “Now that this information is essentially being pushed into our systems, all review users have to do is click their screens and view it—versus going through emails, looking through faxes and receipts, and typing the related data into the system,” said Fitzgerald. With the enhanced quality of the data and the speed of its receipt, average invoicing times have been reduced from over 45 days to seven days post-flight.

Sit Back and Enjoy the Flight

For Avantair’s pilots, the solution allows for optimum customer focus. When they don’t have to go searching through books, it makes lots of things easier. And at the end of the day, there isn’t the ordeal of making copies of expense receipts and faxing them in. Pilots get to focus on what they do best—flying the plane and providing the customers with first-rate service.

MobileIron VSP from AT&T supports device compliance with industry regulations by automatically enforcing application restrictions. “It’s important for us to manage the content on the devices,” explained Fitzgerald. “Any time we find something that’s not on the approved list, MobileIron is going to send a direct message to that device.” In addition, MobileIron provides information security through remote wipes. “If somebody tries to remove the restriction policies that are attached to a device, it will actually delete those apps right away,” Fitzgerald said. If a device is lost or stolen the applications and information can be quickly wiped from it.

Avantair is distributing tablets to all of its pilots and more electronic forms are on the horizon. “The deeper we dig, the more we find we can automate,” said Fitzgerald. “Our goal was to maximize a return on investment. We hit that mark a little while back and now we’re just pushing forward and continually evaluating internally what we can automate and collect electronically.”