Grant Aviation has been in operation since 1971 and we now employ over 200 team members with bases in Anchorage, Bethel, Cold Bay, Dillingham, Dutch Harbor/Unalaska, Emmonak, Kenai and King Salmon, and serving communities throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the Aleutians and Bristol Bay. Grant Aviation provides air ambulance services in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region in addition to scheduled passenger, cargo, charter and scenic Part 135 flights. 

Grant Aviation maintains an operating fleet of over 28 aircraft that includes GA8 Airvans, Cessna 207s, Piper PA-31-350 Navajos, Cessna Grand Caravans, and Beech King Air 200s.

At the beginning we used to only use paper. It was simplistic but boxes of paper would go missing or they would sit at a base and not get picked up so operational errors would happen, clients wouldn’t get billed and our team wasn’t able to communicate effectively because the tools weren’t there. Our clients would also not have the best experience due to the booking, rescheduling and accounting errors that can happen on a paper based system.

We then started using another software company that felt too cumbersome for our operation, it didn’t offer us the flexibility or all the functionality we needed and there were too many extra processes which created a dual entry problem. 

We knew there had to be another way and when we heard the guys at Takeflite present at the Alaska Air Carriers Association we saw a way to solve our daily problems!

We use Takeflite from the moment a reservation is made to the moment the bill goes out. They design and host our website, act as our online booking system and manage these areas; reservations, freight, inventory, dispatch, scheduling, pilots, accounts and we are starting to use Takeflite Maintenance. 90% of our operational employees interact with Takeflite on a daily basis.

Our invoices now go out on time, they don’t get lost and we get paid on time!

We have a greater visibility throughout our operation for the management team, improved and efficient communication between our 8 bases. The fleet planning and maintenance scheduling has improved because we all have access to the same information in real time.

The new website the Takeflite team has built integrates with their online reservation system which we had tried to do for years but could never do until now! This has helped our customers connect with us directly and they can also use the customer portal for people who buy on account. We now spend less time trying to find the paperwork and more time talking to our customers.

We don’t have a lot of comments on losing data anymore so there is little interrupted workflow. Our team doesn’t really talk about issues anymore – the less you hear from the team on problems you know it’s working! The software support has been great and we actually get responses from people who understand aviation because they have backgrounds in it themselves!

It breaks down the barriers for growth. We can now expand within the company and still have all the data without it breaking our systems!  With the software being cloud-based, scalability anywhere we choose to operate is also going to be easier.