PPS Flight planning system

[desertopsguy]

Hello all,

PPS flight planning system. Anyone out there used it? Pros n cons? What kind of operation would you say it is suitable for?

Am getting tired of our current system (not mentioning any names) and seriously looking at other options, PPS was mentioned but I'd be interested to hear from someone who is an end user.

All the best,

D.O.G

[Lauderdale]

....a good start with these kind of guys is where they get their nav data from (if the nav data is ****e, then no matter how funky the apps are the output is somewhat irrelevant).

[waco]

Lauderdale, could you expand? PM if you would prefer. Appreciate it :ok:

[desertopsguy]

According to the literature... "The PPS software solution is powered by Lufthansa systems worldwide naviagation data including all global route restrictions..." und so weiter und so weiter...

So, now that that is out of the way, back to my original question, has anyone actually used it?

I've attached an interesting link here to a survey conducted that shows what market shares the leading flight planning companies have. PPS is in there and so is my current flight planning provider. I noticed that Jeppesen has the clear lead, hardly surprising but alot of that is by deft of name and longevity in the market.
www.asistim.com/downloads/Asistim_Survey230709.pdf (http://www.asistim.com/downloads/Asistim_Survey230709.pdf)

Any comments then please do share them.

D.O.G

[merlinxx]

As regards the survey, you have to remember that Jepp has a very large, and diverse customer base, not just civil air carrier. Also a large team in SJC (was Los Gatos) that are working 24/7 on the system, maybe that's one of the many plus points. I trialed PPS some years ago, but was not happy with it's flexibility, or lack there of as compared to Jetplan.

Ho hum .

[Lauderdale]

...I always take these kind of surveys with a pinch of salt (and conclusions drawn). This one for example was conducted by Peter Koepke...he just 'happens' to be an ex LIDO employee. Anyone having any IATA fuel audits deja vu's? :ugh:

DOG - best advise I can give you mate is this: don't listen to the sales dribble or marketing spin from ANY provider. The only way to do it is this: give PPS (or any other provider you are looking at) a call, ask for a high level presentation then ask for 6 month trial deployment and some serious benchmarking to be done. If the supplier does this for you and in addition doesn't just 'install and run' but guides you on how to use the system then you know you at least you will be getting some fair visibility in regards to the kudos of this supplier, both from a service as well as an application point of view.

To many under performing & over sold deployments outthere....

:ok:

[cl5b&scare]

You have PM :ok:

To the rest of you ,
PPS has come a long way in the last 2 years it’s not a bad little system now with a lot of very useful add on’s, I used it a few years ago and my current employer has just moved to it ..Mainly on costs, I was a little worried that it would not get the job done as we would like, but its proving very good

[ASCOT Ops Retd]

I used PPS for about 4 months. It's a simple enough program to use - enter some very basic data and it'll produce a PLOG - but you get what you pay for and I wouldn't describe it as particularly intuitive. The route finder is particularly thick and often heads down a particular airway and gives up, requiring the user to join up the dots and help it - something you don't need to do with Jepessen products. I'm also not convinced it optimises for weather anywhere near as well as Jepp - in fact in many cases I ended up asking a pal to run a Jetplan to compare, and ended up telling PPS to go the way Jetplan suggested!

That said, it depends what you want it to do. It is indeed very functional and far less fiddly than Jetplan - depends if your ops staff are computer biffers or not. If you fly set routes to set places it'll be fine, but if you do a lot of ad hoc charter stuff to different places, make sure you have a set of paper charts handy too, so you can force it down legal airways it doesn't even show you as options!

If you need more, feel free to PM me. If you've got a job paying 30k+ and near Swindon pleeease PM me :)

[merlinxx]

As you are well aware, how many providers were 'eval'd' by Ascot ? I wonder where
SITA became known as 'Some Times It Takes Ages' around "Romper's Green" & the non Truckers bit ?

PS. I still have a copy of Buz's cartoon ref SITA, want a copy ? PM me.

[His dudeness]

I use PPS for our coorperate operation (1 Jet) It is not bad, however has its drawbacks. It is still not fully windows (as promised already years ago).

Another system, that gives you way more than just flight planning, is aviationoffice, made by a german F/O. I use it for all my scheduling and license and maintenance oversight.
You can sent Handling request, airport slot request etc direct out of AO. It is fully windows and uses as well LIDO data. I will change to AO for flight planning as soon as our PPS contract expires.

The PPS crewbriefing feature is probably the best you can get in terms of met data preparation. You upload you plans to crewbriefing and the crew can access it through the internet and you get tailored wx charts and notams etc for every flight.One can upload documents (pdfs) either for selected flights or all flights. A very good tool.
AO offers something alike, but less powerful.

[desertopsguy]

All,

Thanks for the comments and the feedback, am most grateful. I am going to go beyond the shiny brochure and try to get a demo log in for a closer look and make some comparisons.

All the best.

D.O.G

[j140870]

I'd advise getting your current vendor in for a "tune-up". Make sure they send an SME and not some "Account Manager" type.

Lots of these systems nowadays evolve so quickly that on many occasion you'll find they actually do what you need, you just need some help to show you how.