I joined myairops a little over 4 and a half years ago at a point that our parent organization wanted to execute a major strategic re-plan. I have always had a passion for aviation and have worked in and around the aviation industry for the last 25 years in both military and business aviation. Since joining myairops I have established a phenomenal team of people who together have built some of the most modern cloud capabilities that exist within the aviation market today. Together we have established a close working relationship with a global customer base across a wide portfolio of products and services.
Can you explain what myairops is and why it exists?
myairops exists to perform one simple mission: to provide a set of advanced technologies to the aviation industry which can be used by any organization, no matter the size. We believe that our strength is in our team, the ideas generated by our customers and our expertize in the aviation sector. We set out with a clear vision to put automation and data at the heart of everything we do. You cannot automate if you do not have the correct data and to get data into the system you need an open and scalable architecture which offers data interoperability through APIs and cloud-based technologies. We use the Microsoft Cloud for cognitive services, scalable applications and infrastructure and global coverage to enable our customers to meet their data sovereignty requirements. When we set out on our mission, we knew automation was key. Too many tasks rely heavily on people working across different systems. Process complexity is growing which means increasing workloads. A global shortage of skilled workers within the industry compounds this issue. Having systems that can make decisions on behalf of the users, whilst getting experts involved at the necessary point means organizations can achieve greater efficiency. 
Can you explain what problem you are solving in the aviation industry and why?
myairops solves the efficiency problems that all organizations face. What we have recognized is that different organizations have differing problems and there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution. This has meant we have focused on ensuring our products are the most interoperable in the market. To put it simply, data integration is paramount but looking at how this data is integrated is important. The first approach is to move data between systems. This removes the initial challenge of having to enter the data more than once. However, myairops goes further, we look at the end-to-end business process, analyze where inefficiency and waste are present and optimize it. This is a highly configurable process, and we worry about every click, as repetitive tasks that have waste in them can mount up.
Automation takes the form of processing everything that does not need a human to become involved. Imagine a situation where today you are continually checking everything with respect to a flight, changes in the trip details, passenger manifest changes, crew fatigue and duty constraints, weather and the maintenance considerations around the aircraft. This can become overwhelming especially with smaller teams, large fleets, or complex high-volume operations. Our solution digitizes and automates the decision-making process, in this scenario alerting the human operator to evaluate only the items that are now nearing or outside of operational parameters and need human intervention. This significantly cuts down on the overall workload.
For many years aviation software sat disconnected from other business software and solutions. We have ensured that our solutions slot in directly and allow information and business intelligence to flow freely around the organization.
The breadth of our capability also means we can control and adapt the end-to-end business process. Take for example our myairops flight and myairops fbo products. The first is designed for aviation operations such as staff rostering, scheduling of flights and maintenance (to name a small sub-section of its capabilities) and the second product is for organizing FBO facilities such as ramp handling, parking and service delivery. We are already combining these products to solve challenges in new and emerging sectors of our industry. eVTOLs, and the vertiports that they will operate from, are going to be high turnaround environments needing to make critical decisions around when to take offline and charge, when to swap crew and other decisions such as this. To make those decisions efficient, its necessary to combine all the intelligence and operational information to a single operational picture. Now weave in to this our myairops cam maintenance tracking software and our stores and inventory capabilities and you can see how we can help companies either by taking a single product or a connected suite of products. We of course cannot achieve everything on our own and we have built close working relationships with others in our industry. Always putting operational data and business process workflow automation at the forefront of everything we do. 
What changes have you observed in the industry over the last several years and how have you adapted?
COVID has placed a huge strain on the aviation industry. Closing borders and restricting the flow of movement meant that companies that were already existing on slim margins had their revenue streams cut instantly. Even with support from governments, we saw an unprecedent level of people decide to leave the aviation industry and we are not yet seeing strong recovery of that workforce. When people return, there is still a lead time for training delivery. Another major trend is consolidation, it not only taking the form of M&A but also through the growth of partnerships. There are amazing companies in the market that within their specific area of expertise, we have seen some innovative approaches to certain problems. Organizations need to work together like never before and I believe the business aviation industry has under invested in technology to this point. If you mix in the challenges and opportunities around sustainability, financial control and a thirst for data insights it means that even established vendors have had to completely re-think their strategic imperatives. We have seen divestures and a major shift certainly in technology. We are also on the cusp of a very exciting evolution within our industry which is coming from the need to solve mobility challenges differently to the way they are solved today. eVTOL/VTOLs and drone technologies for both the movement of goods and services, will provide new opportunities as well as significant new challenges to regulators and the way we use airspace.
AI and Machine Learning are currently hot-topics when it comes to technology, what technology advancements do you see happening in the aviation industry?
Yes, they are hot-topics, much like blockchain was a couple of years ago, which I still do not think has yet been harnessed correctly within our industry. The same is true with AI and machine learning. We must be careful about their application and relevance or else the industry will see them as technological fads that have little relevance or are reserved for only the largest companies, commercial carriers or OEMs. We have a view that these are essential capabilities and our mission is to make them accessible to everyone. We see applicability in several key areas: data processing using image recognition, fuel optimization, schedule and roster optimization. The first being based on neural networks and learning. These solutions we have applied for problem spaces like validating or reading paper aircraft logs, MELs, invoices, etc. In this problem space it is all about repetition, memory and neural nets as they are ideal for this type of problem. The remainder is best solved using genetic computing and we partnered with PerceiverAI to achieve this. In grossly simplified terms, a machine can process a huge number of potential scenarios based on data and desired outcomes.