How did you get involved in aviation?
After graduating in the mid 1990s, I moved back to the Middle East. An opportunity arose at a flight support company and I was appointed flight operations coordinator. I worked my way up to senior marketing officer and during this time, set up an enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management system. This made me aware of the importance of being organised.
Why did you develop the FltCtrl platform?
While working in the UAE with flight support services firm RamJet Aviation Support, I became increasingly frustrated by the complexity of the flight operations process – it was crying out to be simplified. Aviation requires quick decision making and to do this, you need to have all the relevant information at your fingertips. Team synchronicity is invaluable. From that seed, the idea for FltCtrl was sown.
What does the FltCtrl tool do?
FltCtrl is designed to remove the complexity from business aviation flight operations by making the process easy, transparent and more productive. Using the latest technology, FltCtrl offers a unified and easy-to-manage communications platform where all relevant data is in one place. This gives greater control over the assignment and tracking of tasks. Importantly, team members can be kept-up-to-date with each new decision, so they can see who is doing what and when. Some of the core features of the tool include Flight Coordination, which removes the need for repetition – flight data only needs to be entered once using pre-set templates; alongside the shared inbox and shared contacts features.
FltCtrl
How did you bring FltCtrl to market?
Once I’d deployed the FltCtrl technology to support RamJet’s operations, it was transformational. I realised the potential of the technology was immense and in November 2015, I launched my company, FltCtrl, to focus 100% on FltCtrl technology. Now, my team of professionals has over 40 years’ combined aviation industry experience. I haven’t looked back.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
In aviation there is always something new and exciting happening. It’s like a powerful drug – it’s addictive. I also enjoy my work because I believe passionately in my products. So as I travel around the world, I am excited to share the benefits that our powerful new tools can bring to the industry. Seeing the reaction, which is generally positive, gives me real satisfaction. I try to stay organised in all areas of my business, which sounds like such a simple task, but a clean desk can quickly pile up with old post-it notes, invoices and even stationery you don’t need. When this happens, I arrange a ‘de-clutter day’ every now and then and I even find that satisfying too – I think it’s important to lead by example.
What are the challenges?
Making people realise that they need to change the way they do things. People on the whole don’t like going outside their comfort zone, and don’t adapt to change easily. We need to educate the industry about the benefits of being organised.
What does the future hold for FltCtrl?
The future looks bright. In just one year, we have managed to launch our second product, FltCheck, a cloud-based app to help aviation companies keep track of important tasks and checklists on the go. Both products are available immediately via subscription, and offer encrypted real time synchronisation for secure 24/7 access for use on an iPhone or iPad and via the web. Although headquartered in London, FltCtrl offers 24/7 dedicated technical support to customers for both products across all times zones.
However, going forward, we want to continue developing FltCtrl and FltCheck. We will continue to listen very carefully to our customers as we plan to add more features to meet the needs of the market.
Source: Flight International
