Dynamic, Web-Based Schedule Board Allows Customized Views Of Trip Data

Stellar Labs and Rockwell Collins are creating a unified cloud-based platform that will include Stellar’s revenue management, optimization, and marketplace capabilities with all of the market leading functionality of ARINCDirect FOS (Flight Operations System).

“We have spent years developing the first digital marketplace for business aviation and our platform is quickly becoming many operators’ system of record for quoting, revenue management and payments,” said Stellar Chairman & CEO Paul Touw. “These are the first of a broad range of features and capabilities that we believe will transform the way business jet operators manage their business and bring their product to market. It is our focus on making the operator more productive and more profitable that will ultimately drive the success of our marketplace.

The platform contains a powerful, rules-based pricing engine that automatically generates fleet-wide quotes in real time. It facilitates quick-response proposals from operators on their fleet. It also gives consumers direct access to operators’ available inventory via Stellar’s iOS app or web booking portal. Pricing rules are set by the operator and can simultaneously accommodate multiple pricing schemes and tens of thousands of unique rules per aircraft. The platform allows advanced sorting and filtering to narrow the selection and preferred options.

Consumers receive options via an operator-branded (or Stellar branded), fully-responsive, HTML5 email or through Stellar’s app. The quoting engine has built-in legality checks to ensure the trip is feasible and automatically adds repositioning legs when necessary. The engine also calculates the disruption cost a new trip creates allowing an operator to take advantage of transient aircraft or preexisting positioning legs. Stellar enables operators and flight departments to seamlessly source aircraft from approved partner operators with no phone calls or emails required.

Trips booked on an operator's fleet are displayed in an interactive schedule board with drill-down capabilities. Live legs, dynamically generated repositioning legs, maintenance events, owner trips and other non-charter events can be created directly from the schedule board to update schedule availability. Operators can choose from a gantt-style timeline view or a calendar view. The schedule board features advanced sorting and filtering capabilities with built-in alerts for critical trip-related events. The platform is fully integrated with existing FOS systems. It pulls the aircraft schedule from FOS and automatically pushes booked trips and positioning legs back into FOS as quote requests until the booking is confirmed.

Stellar has built a high-value payments system able to quickly move money within the platform, electronically sign contracts, and securely pay anywhere within the Stellar network. Customers can access this system through the Stellar iOS app or through a Stellar-Operator co-branded website. The system accepts all standard payment methods including credit cards, ApplePay, wire transfers, direct bank-account debit, and a funds on account facility (StellarPay). A small transaction fee is charged for payments processed through the platform. All electronic payments processed by Stellar are fully PCI-compliant and follow financial industry best practices for data encryption and segmentation.

The platform can also be used between operators to pay for off-fleet flight requirements. Once a consumer or partner operator has paid, funds are guaranteed to the payee operator account, subject to the contract terms and conditions.

Every data element is instantly searchable, selectable, and viewable by an enterprise-grade advanced analytics engine. Data can be displayed in configurable dashboards on the Stellar Operator System, enabling quick access to information such as sales activity, fleet utilization and organizational performance against other key business metrics.

(Source: Stellar news release)

FMI: www.stellar.aero