For ACMI operators who lease aircraft to several clients
The aircraft, and the system that fills it.
UnityTrip lets an aircraft operator with several lessees supply, with the aircraft, the system that fills it. A wet lease is aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance, and every bid offers those; the lessee then builds the rest itself: a spreadsheet for the seats, an email thread for the approvals and an invoice to reconcile each month. UnityTrip puts the rest in the operator's bid, under the operator's own name: a booking channel for the lessee's people, a rule for the seat, a manifest for the crew and an invoice settled from the flight log, from the first day of the lease if the tenant is set up in the six weeks before it.
The model is available, and this page describes it so that the first operator can supply it: a tenant per lessee, opened by the operator; the lessee's rules in its own tenant, set up with UnityTrip at first and by the operator once it has the expertise; the operator's flight log on the other side of the same record. UnityTrip does not fly and does not lease aircraft; the operator does both, the lessee owns its rule and its record, and UnityTrip is the component beneath, as it is beneath an integrator's delivery.
What the lessee gets with the aircraft
- A booking channel of its own. The lessee's people book their own seats on the aircraft's schedule, under a rule the lessee sets: priority, quota, booking window, displacement, penalties and go-shows. The seat allocation guide sets out the seven elements.
- A manifest the crew board from. No boarding without a booking number, a live manifest per departure, and the two channels on the same aircraft: business travel on an approved claim, private travel on quota.
- An invoice it can reconcile without a meeting. The lease settles from the crew's flight log, the agreed record for accounts payable, so the lessee pays for the hours its own record shows were flown.
What the aircraft operator gets
- The bid. When two operators bid for the same lease, one offers the aircraft and the other offers the aircraft and the system that fills it. The second bid includes the work the lessee would otherwise do itself.
- Paid from the log. The crew's log settles the lease, so the operator is paid without a reconciliation argument; the humanitarian page sets out the mechanism.
- One platform, every lessee a tenant. Each lessee runs in its own tenant, provisioned as code in minutes, with its own rules and its own record, and the operator's name on the front of each.
The commercial model
The operator holds the agreement and opens a tenant for each lessee under its own name. UnityTrip does the setup at first, the lessee's rule written into its tenant and the onboarding, in six weeks, not a migration project; an operator that builds the expertise takes it over and runs the whole service as its own, setup included. A seasonal client, a plant shutdown, a harvest or an election that runs for three months a year, gets a tenant provisioned as code for the season; the platform is built for demand that arrives in bursts. The published plans on the Azure Marketplace are the anchor; the private offer fits the tenant, as the platform page says.
What a lessee can ask of any operator bidding for its lease
One question in the tender: does the aircraft come with the system that fills it, and is the invoice settled from the flight log? If the answer is the aircraft and the crew, the lessee is being asked to build the rest itself.
What it needs from you
The schedule, the aircraft and the contract: the fixed and variable charges, and the flight log as the agreed record. The lessee brings its rule, written once into the Policy Builder, free and without an account. For a first conversation, the lease you are bidding for and the lessee you would hand the tenant to.
Common Questions
Can an aircraft operator offer UnityTrip to its lessees under its own name?
Yes. The platform is white-labelled: each lessee runs as its own tenant under the operator's name, with its own rules, bookings and record, provisioned as code. The setup is UnityTrip's at first and the operator's once it has the expertise, so the service can be wholly the operator's. UnityTrip owns the booking engine, the policy enforcement and the audit trail underneath, as it does beneath an integrator's delivery. No operator has supplied it with an aircraft yet; the model is available.
Who owns the rules and the data in a white-labelled tenant?
The lessee. Its policy is its own, set in its tenant and applied the same way to every traveller, and its booking record is its own. The operator administers the tenant on the lessee's behalf; its own side of the record is the manifest its crew board from and the flight log they collect, which settles its invoice.
How is the lease settled from the flight log?
The crew's log is the agreed record for accounts payable: the fixed charge and the variable charge for hours flown are computed from it rather than from an invoice typed up later, so the operator is paid without a reconciliation argument and the lessee pays for the hours its own record shows were flown. This has run in the humanitarian air services the founders have worked in, where several operators each settle from their own log; the humanitarian page sets out the mechanism.
What happens to bookings when the operator takes an aircraft out of service?
The aircraft is the operator's call and the rotation is the lessee's. When an aircraft comes out of service, every booking on the departures it flew is validated against the lessee's rules: travellers who no longer fit are moved to the next departure in priority order, displacement and go-shows handle the seats that move, and each manifest updates as it happens. The operations questions page sets out the handling of a cancelled departure.
What did your last lease bid include beyond the aircraft and the crew, and how long did last month's invoice take to agree?
If the answer is nothing, and a meeting, the next bid is where this starts.