Providing flight plans and weather package

[chimichanga]

Hi,

Brief background: I am not a dispatcher, FBO, or aircraft operator. I am in the aircraft handling biz.

I am considering providing flight plans and weather packages to my customers (aircraft pilots). Can I do this? Or do I require some type of license? The flight plans would be for non airline operations. The flight plans and weather would be for biz jet operators. May I provide this service to FAA Part 91 and Part 135 operators? Also, may I provide this service to the JAA/EASA equivelant of Part 91 and/or Part 135 (whatever this is called).

Any legit info would be really helpful. I have tried for a month to get an answer from EASA in Cologne, Germany and it has been a nightmare. I keep getting transferred to somebody who can't give me an answer and then told to write an email, which never receives a reply. Strange.

Thank you!

[PT6A]

I don't really see the market.....

You would service one airport? Operators would already have their own procedures in force to obtain their flight plans etc.

In the event the company wished to outsource their flight planning.... Then they would go to (insert name of flight planning provider)

Now considering you would have to have a licence from the said flight planning provider and 100's of aircraft and engine combinations subscribed to it would cost you an arm and a leg... In short no way you could do it cheaper than the flight planning provider.

PT6A

[chimichanga]

PT6: I appreciate you taking the time to write.

No, I have many clients who go to about every airport in the world.

[PT6A]

The cost of you obtaining a licence so you can not only run flight plans but sell them as well would be very high.

Have you spoken to Jeppesen ETC to see if they would even give you a licence to do what you propose?

PT6A

[Grasscarp]

I dont see how you would be able to give them your own flight plans. Computed flight plans need to have a navigation database, imput of winds aloft and the aircraft data from the manufacturer. It then needs to be able to optimise on a selection of routes. You would not be able to do this by yourself. (It gets more complex with crossing oceans so including tracks, and Europe needs to be RAD and CDR compliancy). There are many flight planning providers already on the market for all sizes of operation, so cannot see that you would be able to offer anything comparable or at all to be honest. You may be able to set up to provide them with weather charts or METARs and TAFs but again most operators already have their own services set up and with the abundance of information on the internet you would be unlikely to be able to be competitive. (IMHO)
If you only want to offer a third party's products then you need the permission of that company and not EASA.

[chimichanga]

I appreciate the feedback. As I mentioned, I was simply tossing around the idea.

I would not be doing the flightplans. I was investigating having a company provide flight plans and then providing that as a standard handling package.

There are a few companies out there with extensive aircraft databases, but an earlier post seemed to be quite accurate in saying that the cost would be high.

Thank you.

[Bobby Hart]

I work with a VFR project which does something very similar, and even for VFR the cost of licensing the relavant data is quite high for the return. If you have to go to many third parties for all that data, then you have to be able to offset the costs somewhere to stay competitive. If you harvest and collate the data yourself, then your systems and procedures need to be absolutely watertight and fully certified.

Finding a stable middle ground between the two is the key to success. Good luck!