Software company Portside has reached an agreement with Wheels Up's affiliate Avianis Systems, on a licence to market, service and develop the Avianis fleet management system. The agreement extends Portside's suite of integrated, cloud-based software solutions for business aviation operators across the globe.

“We are excited to add Avianis to our industry-leading set of technology solutions,” says Alek Vernitsky, CEO and co-founder of Portside. “As we continue to build a turn-key and scalable operating system for business aviation, Avianis brings important functionality, a best-in-class user experience and an outstanding support team to our overall value proposition, and we see enormous potential to continue to develop and enhance the platform.”

Under the terms of the deal, Portside will continue to serve Avianis's existing customer base, market to prospective customers and develop new features for the platform, which is widely considered one of the premier flight management systems in the industry. Key members of the Avianis product and support teams will join Portside to serve customer needs and future development opportunities.

Wheels Up will retain the intellectual property associated with Avianis and will continue to maintain and develop its own internal instance of the platform as the FMS for its first-party fleet.

“This agreement is evidence of the great product the Avianis team has built as part of the Wheels Up family and the continued value it adds for some of the top operators around the world,” explains Dave Godsman, Wheels Up chief digital officer. “Avianis has become an integral part of Wheels Up's platform, and we are pleased it will continue to serve as a core piece of our operations.”

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. This news comes on the back of continuing losses, a falling share price and the resignation of CEO and founder Kenny Dichter from Wheels Up.