Growing substantially in recent years both organically and through acquisitions, Jet Support Services Inc. (JSSI) has evolved into a maintenance intelligence provider from the beginning to the end stages of aircraft ownership.

Founded in 1989, JSSI built its foundation on its core business of hourly-cost maintenance programs. But in recent years, it has added companies such as Conklin & de Decker, Traxxall, SierraTrax, and Shearwater Global Capital to its portfolio and has also grown parts and other services.

“With that growth,” said Megha Bhatia, a former Rolls-Royce executive who joined JSSI this year as chief marketing and strategy officer, JSSI is striving to provide “a new level of maintenance intelligence to drive cost savings and efficiencies for the customer. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that budgets are stabilized, and the customer has a breadth of information available to them in terms of understanding what the operational costs look like.”

This goal has remained relatively unchanged since JSSI's beginning. But the more insight it is able to provide, the better JSSI is able to help the customer enhance residual value and aircraft availability, she said. “We've strategically expanded to be able to include a suite of maintenance and financial solutions that would simplify the technical complexities as well as the economic complexities of aircraft ownership."

This begins with aircraft cost and evaluation specialist Conklin & de Decker, which it acquired in 2018. The addition provided expertise to assist customers in the pre-acquisition phase as they are evaluating aircraft, she said, calling Conklin & de Decker a “benchmark for operating cost and performance data for virtually all makes and models of business aviation aircraft.”

JSSI launched a specialty finance unit with the acquisition of Shearwater this year. “It’s an alternative to traditional lending options,” Bhatia said. The asset-based lender “is in a place specifically to address a gap in the market looking at mid-vintage aircraft.” She defined that as aircraft 15 years or older.

Once a person or organization owns an aircraft, they need to manage operating costs and protect the value of the asset. “That’s where maintenance programs come into play,” she said, pointing to maintenance tracking providers Traxxall and SierraTrax, both of which were acquired in 2021. They ease the process of maintaining the asset through their tracking software, she said. “Our goal is to continue to build on that maintenance operating platform to add value to the community,” Bhatia said, noting that Traxxall is the second-largest maintenance tracking software provider on the market. JSSI is demonstrating its maintenance software at its booth during BACE.

Also, JSSI’s maintenance cost-per-hour programs—the foundation of the company and a template for support that has spread throughout the industry—provide financial certainty. At the same time, JSSI Parts & Leasing, which was founded in 2014, offers a single source for parts seekers, she said. Parts & Leasing can further work with customers on end of life with disassembly solutions.

“Our Parts & Leasing arm has grown tremendously, especially over the last few years. The supply chain challenges really demonstrated a need for that single-source solution for parts,” she said. 

JSSI has been able to leverage its in-house expertise in asset management and customer needs to help grow this business. “We’ve taken all this information, all this data, to invest in developing this extensive inventory,” she said. JSSI has two warehouses that are stocked with more than 100,000 lines of inventory. “That’s doubled over the last couple of years,” Bhatia said, and that includes more than 60 engines and APUs. Helping that effort is a network of more than 400 vendors that JSSI has developed to help it source parts.

If JSSI doesn’t have a part for a customer, it can leverage that network. She acknowledged that high-demand parts will always be a “tricky challenge,” but said that’s why the company has developed a team of buyers to keep an eye on the market.

Capping all of this is JSSI’s Advisory Services, which has grown to cover an array of consulting, appraisal, asset inspection, and maintenance event management services. With all its units, Bhatia said, JSSI can now offer an entire suite of services across the lifecycle of an aircraft.

She credited JSSI employees for helping these services flourish and said the company has concentrated on investing in its people, particularly in the last several months throughout the executives, sales, and operations ranks.

Other recent personnel moves include the naming of former Flightdocs president Greg Heine as senior v-p of maintenance software strategy and operations; Manuel Ruanova as director of business development for the U.S. West Coast; and Ben Hockenberg as COO.

“The goal is to continue to invest in talent and strategic expansion to be able to build on JSSI’s vision and shape the company,” Bhatia said.