Our history

The company was founded in 1986 by Charles Steel and Ken Jones, both of whom were formerly pilots with Dan Air. The aim of the company was to develop the first PC based flightplanning system suitable for major airlines. The initial system was launched commercially in the same year with great success - British Midland and Monarch being two of the pioneering launch customers.

Two years later, the software won the prestigious British Design Award for Software and rapidly became established as the leading PC based in-house flight planning system.

In 1989 the company relocated from the south-east of England to offices in Cromford, Derbyshire, and was subsequently acquired by the FR Group plc in March of 1990 which resulted in another move to more prestigious premises in Belper - these new offices were officially opened by Patrick McClochin, one of the Government's Ministers of transport at the time.

Three years later, a management buy-out brought the company back into private ownership and laid the foundations for the company's relocation to Gatwick as well as the creation of AFOS (AirData Flight Operations Support). AFOS offered a full 24-hour operations support service to aircraft operators throughout the world.

In the summer of 1995, AirData and Baseops International, based in Houston, Texas, formed a strategic alliance to combine AirData's flight planning system with Baseops' established operations service business. AFOS became Baseops Europe Limited and AirData eventually became a subsidiary of Baseops International.

1998 saw yet another change in the ownership of the company as Baseops International was acquired by the Miami headquartered World Fuel Services Corporation.

Since 1998, the company has enjoyed a very stable period and has reaped the benefits associated with having a large and successful public listed company as the parent organisation. Even the generalised downturn in the aviation economy, post 9/11, has had little impact on the success of the company and the number of airlines using our Flight Planning Systems has continued to grow - taking the company from strength to strength.