Flight Pro International in Houston Texas is launching its tablet-ready secure trip management technology Flight Pro Connect (FPC). Shortly after passing its second annual penetration test (pen test) in August 2023, the app is now available for download for all FPI clients.

Beta testing for mobile phones is underway and is anticipated to be available in Q1 2024.

FPC users can expect to benefit from trip schedules and daily view; services details with status updates; crew and passenger manifest and documentation; access to trip documents; trip alerts for critical services and documents; and real-time communication.

The technology was already being used by some operations and crew teams before becoming available in tablet/app format. Having gleaned troubleshooting feedback and best practice needs from clients during the market research phase, Cormack's team was quickly able to outfit FPC with high levels of backstop features.

“Most FPI team members have worked in global trip management for 25-30 years apiece, and we've seen a litany of technical 'lessons learned' from a variety of operations experiences,” says Roberto Cormack, FPI EVP, CIO and leader of the FPC development team.

FPC assumes a five-pillar, premium-quality approach: cloud-based infrastructure, geo-redundancy, on demand scalability, security and mobile optimisation.

By being cloud-based, FPC is freed from typical non-cloud server constraints such as limited speed flexibility, IT technician availability, on demand storage capacity (scalability) and lacking nationwide backstops in case of disruptions, all of which are ongoing concerns for platforms tethered to ground-server infrastructures.

Most notably, the FPC's geo-redundancy feature ensures the ability to convert the entire platform and collection of trip management data from one major US region to a completely separate US region, and do so within one hour.

FPI has committed to perform annual pen tests, and its partnership with Microsoft further adds to on demand resources and security.

“At the inception of FPC development, our goal has always been to remain customer-centric as the core driver behind the FPC programme, even if it appears to be 'overkill' for the average client trip,” says Cormack.