Story ID: 130Trip-SpeedAINFeb12
Trip-Speed App Hastens Charter Approvals
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: 
Word Count: 414
Trip-Speed is a simple iPhone app that helps aircraft owners and management firms communicate about aircraft availability for charter flights. Aviation attorney Stewart Lapayowker developed Trip-Speed to solve a key problem: getting timely agreement from an owner when a charter trip pops up.

Few agreements allow management companies to accept a charter on behalf of the aircraft owner without checking with the owner first, although that would be the ideal setup. The problem is that owners or their representatives aren’t always available to provide a quick response. Trip-Speed is designed to accelerate that decision-making process while delivering useful information to the owner.

Trip-Speed comes in two versions, one for the management company and one for owners. Once an owner adds his or her aircraft to the app, Trip-Speed is ready for action. When a charter opportunity pops up, the management Trip-Speed account user sends a request to the owner Trip-Speed account asking for confirmation of availability to charter the aircraft. The request includes where the flight is going, number of passengers, how many revenue hours and any information about the trip that might help the owner make a decision. For example, if the charter customer planned to carry two dogs on the flight, that could be added as a comment.

What makes Trip-Speed quick is that the charter opportunity pops up as a notification on the aircraft owner’s iPhone. And the owner can share his or her owner key with any other iPhone user on the team, such as the pilots, CFO or anyone authorized to approve the use of the aircraft.

“This solves a pain we have in the industry,” said Lapayowker. “Once owners get to use it and deploy it, they will appreciate what it does for them.”

Trip-Speed includes a history feature that summarizes charter requests and revenue hours, so that owners can instantly view the activity of their aircraft. This also solves the age-old problem of owners and management firms’ disagreeing about what the aircraft has done and whether the owner approved enough trips.

Trip-Speed is selling for a promotional price of $29.95 per user (for both versions). Lapayowker is planning to integrate Trip-Speed with a desktop computer version and with other software programs. An upcoming version of Trip-Speed will allow owners to send messages to the flight department or management company with details on a planned trip. “This gets the ball rolling,” he said.