Story ID: 
Flightdocs Merges with Aircraft Technical Publishers
By: Jerry Siebenmark
Caption: The Flightdocs-ATP combination creates a company offering an array of aircraft maintenance services and data.
Word Count: 597
Cloud-based maintenance-tracking company Flightdocs has merged with Aircraft Technical Publishers (ATP) in a move aimed at creating a comprehensive provider of software and information services to the business, commercial, and military aviation sectors. The merger agreement between Florida-based Flightdocs and San Francisco-based ATP was signed this week.

Under the ATP umbrella, the combined offerings of each company include aircraft maintenance tracking, troubleshooting, recurring defect analysis, inventory management, and flight scheduling, as well as a library of technical publications and regulatory content. ATP CEO Rick Noble told AIN that his company experimented with the maintenance tracking business but was “late to the game” and “couldn’t gain any traction,” so “for ATP it really was an easy decision” to merge.

ATP’s Aviation Hub, offered under ATP Information Services, supplies OEM technical and regulatory publications that are updated in real-time, while its Software Solutions division in Canada provides defect management and interactive troubleshooting software under the brands of ChronicX and SpotLight. With the merger, ATP serves 75,000 maintenance personnel at 7,500 MROs and flight departments in 137 countries.

For Flightdocs CEO Rick Heine, the merger makes sense in a variety of ways, even though when the discussions with ATP started three months ago, a merger was the last thing he was planning. “We originally were in the market to raise additional capital and move the company forward to…ultimately to try to get to the top spot [in maintenance tracking market share],” Heine told AIN. But when they began talking, Heine said with ATP’s footprint in the market, as well as its depth, size, scope, and products, “there were so many synergies there that coming together really made a lot of sense.” It was also a deal that he claimed benefits Flightdocs’ customers and employees. “It was a win, win, win across the board,” he said.

“When you put all those things together and you look at the future, we’re pretty much in the business aviation world,” Heine explained. “But the ATP combination allows us to go through commercial, military, and back again, bringing their products and services into business aviation. It also really brings the products and services [customers of Flightdocs] wanted to their flight departments and makes their experiences better.”

While Flightdocs products and services expand and round out ATP’s offerings, having it in the ATP fold also presents opportunities for expanded or new products and services, Noble explained. “It’s not just sort of putting the two companies together and leaving it at that.”

At that top of the post-merger to-do list is enabling Flightdocs’ maintenance customers access to ATP’s Aviation Hub’s technical documents. Also, a third of ATP’s Aviation Hub revenue comes from international customers. Noble said his company will use those relationships to expand Flightdocs’ market share overseas, where it will face competition from existing products. “I’m really confident we’re going to have the same success there that Flightdocs has had in the U.S.,” he said.

Noble added that the merged company also will look at the feasibility of offering versions of SpotLight and ChronicX to corporate flight departments. “I only half-jokingly said the other day that there’s so many opportunities here that we run the risk of trying to do everything and accomplish nothing,” Noble added. “So we’re going to have to figure out pretty early on what the top two or three things are and really focus on those before we start moving on to the next.”