On this blog, we like covering businesses that use light-aircraft to give their business a competitive edge.

Here’s another great example of a software business where the owner and all 7 field technicians have pilots licenses which they use to turbo-charge customer service.

Bend, Oregon-based Paladin Data Corp. has been developing, supporting and delivering Point of Sales (POS) and Inventory Management Solutions for nearly 30 years.

Here’s an excerpt from the article describing the most fundamental value proposition:

For its first 10 years in business, the ISV was relegated to selling its software to locations within reasonable driving distances. With states as large as those in the Northwest, the company’s business potential was limited. “Mountains in this area are pretty large, and even though the distance between two cities might only be a couple hundred miles, there could be two or more mountain ranges you have to cross,” Nesmith says. “Being able to go up and over in a straight line via airplane can obviously drastically reduce travel time. In fact, it’s not uncommon to turn a 5-hour drive into a flight that takes less than an hour.” About 15 years ago, after contracting with a local pilot to be flown to a remote customer site, Nesmith became enchanted with the thought of being a pilot himself. His wife bought him flying lessons as a present, and a short time later Nesmith had his pilot’s license. A couple weeks after that, the ISV bought his first plane, a single-engine aircraft. This gave Nesmith the ability to far surpass the capabilities of cars.

In addition to just “getting there” quicker, Nesmith says that “One of the greatest aspects of our business model is the ability to conduct more business in the same amount of time,”

“For instance, we’ve had numerous missions where we’ve flown somewhere to do a job and we stopped in a different state on the way back to prospect a new customer.” In fact, Nesmith recalls one time he flew to Ohio for an install. While he was there, a “now or never” sales opportunity presented itself in Iowa. The path back home was about the same distance going through Iowa, so he stopped and wound up winning the business. The ISV has determined that if he can conduct business in several distant locations in the amount of time it would have taken to get to and back from one in a car, his company is greatly advantaged.

If, like 99.99% of other businesses, the company had to rely on commercial aviation,

[..] our people would spend hours driving to the airport, hours waiting and then flying, and then more time in a rental car,” he says. “With our own airplanes, we can leave our hangar and get directly to a customer in significantly fewer hours.” In essence, Nesmith and his few technicians are tied up for less time, able to run more missions, and therefore, sell and service more customers. “Most companies hire more personnel and rent an office in a strip mall some place, and that becomes their presence in a geographic area,” says Nesmith. “We use the same personnel we have, but make them more mobile.”

There’s no doubt that having a founder and field technicians with pilot’s licenses is a great advantage, and can make even a small business look and act big. But what if you don’t have a pilot’s license and can’t afford to buy and maintain an aircraft – let alone get your employees licensed?

Now you have an option – FlyMiwok and its operators give you the same flexibility without you having to fly or even buy your own aircraft. And even if you do fly your own aircraft like Mr. Nesmith, having someone else fly you around is cheaper and allows you to work on the airplane instead of focusing on flying.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.

For many business people, having a pilot’s license and a plane to fly themselves makes all the difference. An article in the Columbia Tribune highlights the many advantages of being able to fly on your own schedule to any airport – many of which are much closer to your ultimate destination than major commercial airports. 

The bottom line is that many business executives who have a pilot’s license agree that the time savings combined with the ability to get more done in a day’s work is ultimately money saving proposition.

But what about those who don’t have a pilot’s license and cannot afford private jets? – Well, now they have an option to fly the same type of affordable ‘car-with-wings’-type airplanes these pilot/executives do but with a professional FlyMiwok operator. And often it’ll cost them less than what the self-flying executive would have to pony up.

One final thought, as a self-flying executive myself and as much as I love flying, I would often rather have someone else flying the airplane while I catch up on work in the back seat. After all, on-demand flying is about maximizing your time and getting things done whether it’s business or just being back in time for the kids soccer game.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.

It’s great to see Cirrus get some good press from Wired Magazine. In an article by Jason Paur today the company [called a startup… how long can a company be called a startup? – Cirrus was founded in 1984..] says it has 2 goals: offering the best small plane and getting more people to take up flying.

Cirrus has been very successful – in our view – at offering incredible flying machines, and what’s even more impressive is that design innovation at Cirrus never stops. They are truly always at the cutting edge of aviation technology and one of the few aviation manufacturers who think about passenger comfort as much as about pilot comfort (which is one of many reasons we picked the Cirrus SR-22 to standardize on for FlyMiwok’s operators). The cabin is truly like a comfortable luxury car – think of it as a Mercedes with wings – and it’s been my experience that passengers who fly with me always make that comparison. 

Safety is another. Cirrus was the first company to offer airframe parachute standard in all aircraft. This gives pilots another option where none would exist – such as physical damage to the airplane of loss of control (c.f. my post on the Hudson river accident). Also, the avionics suite in the Cirrus has always offered the best possible situational awareness features giving pilots better information about various flight parameters, traffic, terrain, etc. – than most airliners have.

Photo courtesy Cirrus Design

The article compares Cirrus briefly to the defunct (though recently somewhat re-funct – to make up a term…) Eclipse Aviation. That’s where the article references an article written almost a year ago about us and discusses the potential of Cirrus-based air-taxis.  They follow with this quote from James Fallows (who also mentioned us last year):

If that could percolate to several rings out on the richness scale so it wasn’t just the really rich who could have an alternative to the airlines, that would have an impression on people as being attractive and convenient

That’s what we’re about – making on-demand air-travel accessible to anyone at economy-class ticket prices. Cirrus could very well be the Boeing to this new air-travel paradigm.

Gad Barnea – CEO – FlyMiwok, Inc.