Stellar Labs (Booth N4000) raised $26.3 million in series A equity financing from Global Jet Capital (Booth N5121), Columbia Equity Partners and Expa. Stellar will invest $50 million, using this funding and previous rounds from Rockwell Collins (Booth N4000), into its next-generation technology platform for business aviation. The Silicon Valley company is showcasing this technology at NBAA 2017 this week.
It is working with Rockwell Collins to create a cloud-based operating program that merges the flight operations planning of ArincDirect’s flight operating system with Stellar’s global distribution systems and commercial operations technology. The system includes features for commercial and aircraft operations, revenue and crew management and digital global distribution.
Brian Flynn of Columbia Equity Partners, one of the organizations that participated in Stellar’s funding, said, “Business aviation is riddled with inefficiencies, from overhead and transaction costs of 40 percent to a nearly 38 percent non-revenue or ‘deadhead’ rate, to asset utilization rates one-eighth that of commercial airlines. Stellar is on the verge of solving these problems and even incremental improvements to these metrics could cut on-demand charter costs by more than one-third.”
