Tailplane launches a new billing platform for flight schools

Tailplane, a new flight school management platform has launched publicly. While there already are several solutions available on the market, we believe there is a significant gap between existing functionality and quality, and what we could build. Tailplane is a modern, cloud-based solution, built from the ground up, using a modern state-of-the-art technology stack and delivers comprehensive functionality in a beautiful, easy to use web and mobile interface.

Protect your students with online payments

We know we are launching our product in rather extraordinary times of Coronavirus pandemic, so we understand that many flight schools have recently undergone a significant transformation of their daily operations, to make sure they are safe for the students, instructors and staff members. This is why the main functionality we are currently focused on is our billing and payments module. The goal is to replace the current Point of Sale terminal-based process, (which is impossible to do in a socially distanced way) with completely contactless payments using our platform.

It's effortless to set up and use. You can import your existing members from an Excel spreadsheet (see our how-to guide) or contact us, and we'll help you migrate, free of charge. Once that's done, the system will automatically send invitation emails to all new members asking them to set up an account. Every pilot can then add their payment details (all major credit and debit cards are supported, including Visa, Mastercard and American Express) and whenever a payment is created by your staff member, the card on file is automatically charged.

It's simple, secure and convenient. You can attach an aircraft to the booking and specify the actual flight duration, the system will calculate the total rate automatically. You can also add additional items, like membership fees, fuel surcharges or items from your pilot's store.

The 30,000-foot view

Because all the payment and bookings data lives in a single place and has relevant context, we can provide you with real-time reporting. You can run a traditional sales report, split your sales by hour, day, week, month or year and specify the date range you're interested in. You can also see how the bookings were split between all aircraft in your fleet to understand the profitability of each. With our customer retention report, you can review how many of previous customers that come back in each subsequent month, in a beautiful, visual way. This is a great way to understand if your customers are coming back after their first introductory flight for instance.

You can read more about reporting functionality in Tailplane here.

Much more is coming soon

The current feature set, which you can explore on the product tour page is just the beginning. We're hard at work and already have several exciting updates in the pipeline that we can't wait to show you:

beautiful bookings platform for your students and instructors, tightly integrated with the payments module (read more on For Pilots page) aircraft maintenance module, including reminders and squawk manager student records and progress reports document and certificate management If there's anything else you'd love to see, send us an email.

It's free of charge

You can start using Tailplane today, it's completely free with no set-up or monthly fees — no strings attached. We only charge a small transaction fee when a payment is made through the platform. There's no obligation, you can run any percentage of your payments through Tailplane and mark any others as external. (e.g. if you use a POS terminal like iZettle or Square)

Get in touch to discuss the details and start your journey with Tailplane, turbulence-free.