Strafos: Empty legs and efficient booking

Strafos is on a mission to optimise business aviation bookings. The Czech Republic-based charter booking and flight management software platform was founded last year from a desire to remove the “pain points” of charter flight quoting and booking processes.

Strafos founder and CEO, Marek Wagner told CJI: “Business aviation was (and still is) based on a lot of manual work with little to no optimisation resulting in many unnecessary empty flights and lower than possible revenue for operators.

“I wanted to solve the real problem I was encountering every day at work responding to private jet charter requests and sending quotes,” added Wagner.

“Instant bookings” are one positive from the platform, but by having all data online in the Strafos platform, instant bookings of empty legs with prices significantly reduced are available to book more conveniently now too, said Wagner.

“Strafos will basically allow simple reservation of otherwise empty seats,” he added.

Almost all data in Strafos is exclusively filed by each operator. However for certain functionalities, such as precise flight time calculation or searching an airport database, the company sources the information from third parties.

“We also develop advanced base to machine learning processes in order to use anonymised data to bring even more accurate data and optimise the Strafos experience for each client,” said Wagner.

Development of the current Strafos’ current minimum viable product (MVP) began almost exactly a year ago, according to Wagner.

“We’ve spent the last three months testing and perfecting the software,” he said. “However, we continue to add new functions based on both our roadmap and also requirements from our new clients. The software development is a never-ending process and we plan to introduce many new functions by the end of this year.”

The platform is a member of both the European Business Aviation Association and the UK Air Charter Association.