FlightBridge and FL3XX save Prime Jet thousands in expenses, and hours of manual work each week

This case study explores how FlightBridge and FL3XX improve Prime Jet’s charter flight operations. Thanks to a seamless integration between the two tools, Prime Jet enjoys a modern flight scheduling system paired with effortless crew travel arrangements.

For Jason Roberson, Director of Flight Operations at Prime Jet, a smooth trip is a successful trip.
And for complex charter operations at Prime Jet, smooth trips are a requirement. Since 2003, the Colorado-based private charter company has safely dispatched over 115,000 flight hours, sent passengers to over 190 countries, and maintains an extensive fleet of heavy, ultra-long-range Gulfstream aircraft.
With its growing operations, Prime Jet needed the right tools to stay on top of it all, from flight scheduling complexities to crew accommodations and everything in between.

THE PROBLEM
When Roberson joined Prime Jet in 2011, many day-to-day flight operations were conducted on
paper, over the phone, and through email. From time-consuming manual processes dealing with hotels and car rental companies, to a flight scheduling system (FSS) that didn’t quite meet their needs, the team was overworked.
“Our previous scheduling system was causing us frustration,” Roberson said. “And I can’t explain how difficult it was for us to manage crew travel arrangements. We were re-entering thesame information two or three times for every trip.”

THE SOLUTION
To solve the problem, Roberson tapped two aviation technology companies, FlightBridge and FL3XX, both of which helped significantly streamline Prime Jet’s flight operations.

FlightBridge - Enabling effortless crew travel arrangements
For over a decade, Roberson has relied on FlightBridge to manage crew travel arrangements. With FlightBridge, aircraft operators can book and manage hotel stays, car rentals, commercial air tickets and more, and link them to their private aviation trips, all in a single platform.
“Before FlightBridge, we would have to go out to a hotel’s website, re-enter all the trip details, then provide a placeholder credit card, and hope that at the end of the month our crew would move charges off that card and onto their own card,” Roberson said. “And for commercial air tickets, we went to Kayak.com and manually re-entered so much information all over again. FlightBridge removed all that headache.”

FlightBridge also enables FBO communication and requests, group bookings, local ground
transportation, third party services like catering, and provides access to negotiated car and hotel rates with pilot-friendly policies like same-day cancellation. Plus, FlightBridge continues to add user-requested features - the latest being the ability to track and apply unused airline credits to a commercial airline booking.
“At one point we had over $10,000 in unused airline credits that our crew wasn’t claiming,”
Roberson said. “FlightBridge tracks our unused credits automatically and lets us apply them to bookings with just a click.”

Thanks to advanced reporting capabilities, Prime Jet can compare its cost savings using FlightBridge to other booking methods. In 2023 alone, Prime Jet saved approximately $250,000
in hotel expenses, due to cost savings from FlightBridge-exclusive rates used on many of Prime Jet’s nearly 10,000 annual room nights.
While FlightBridge is powerful on its own and can be used without an FSS, it pairs well with a capable one running alongside it. The incumbent system Prime Jet was using was slow and
outdated. In early 2023, Roberson decided it was time for a change.

FL3XX - The Foundation of Flight Operation
After years of working with its original FSS, Prime Jet made the switch to FL3XX, to serve as the foundation of their flight operation. Roberson says FL3XX proved to be far more modern
and intuitive, compared to Prime Jet’s previous system.
“One of the things our team loves about FL3XX is the user-friendly interface. Our schedule is
laid out on a horizontal timeline, which makes it easy to see everything that’s going on,” Roberson said.
“I also love the color coding in the FL3XX flight schedule,” Robinson continued. “I log in every
day, and usually everything is marked green, but when there’s an issue it’s highlighted red or
purple, so I know to quickly take action and sort out any issues.”

FL3XX comes with everything Part 135, Part 91, Cargo, Helicopter, and Air Ambulance operators need to manage and sell flights. Communication with clients, expense tracking, and the
entire dispatch, crew, and maintenance workflows are all embedded in the single platform. 

Like FlightBridge, FL3XX is also cloud-based and allows for endless customization and
integrations to suit Prime Jet’s unique needs. Along with over 100 connected services, FL3XX
also has powerful reporting capabilities, giving Prime Jet insight into valuable operational
efficiency and business performance metrics.

And because FL3XX and FlightBridge are integration partners, Roberson and his team can
seamlessly manage their flight schedule and crew travel arrangements, all within one workflow.

FlightBridge & FL3XX - A perfect pairing for private and business aviation

The core feature of the FlightBridge and FL3XX integration is that trips are automatically synced between the two systems in real-time, removing duplicate data entry entirely. And with a single click, users can jump from FL3XX into the trip details in FlightBridge. After booking trip
services in FlightBridge, confirmation details flow back into the service notes in FL3XX and are viewable on trip sheets and in the Crew app.

Prime Jet saw immediate time-savings improvements in using the two tools together. Manual workload is down significantly, which frees up more time for both Roberson and his crew.
“The synergy between FL3XX and FlightBridge has been a game changer for us. The simplicity of FL3XX’s interface, coupled with FlightBridge’s powerful booking platform, saves us so much time and headache,” Roberson said. “It’s so helpful being able to see it all on one screen.”
Thanks to FlightBridge and FL3XX, Prime Jet spends more time delivering an enhanced level of service, instead of getting bogged down by its tech stack.

For details on enabling the FlightBridge and FL3XX integration, click here.