RocketRoute raises £220K from Angel investors

Funding

Aviation navigation company RocketRoute.com has secured £220,000 of equity investment, including £40,000 from a consortium of investor members at Thames Valley Investment Network, (TVIN) a business angel network, enabling the company to take its online flight planning service to market.

RocketRoute.com has developed an online service that allows pilots to generate and file flight plans up to thirty minutes before departure. The company says its product solves a significant problem for many pilots, from executive jet operators to weekend enthusiasts.

Currently, preparing a route and filing with the correct authorities is manual and time consuming. RocketRoute cuts this task from an hour or more of planning to a matter of just a few minutes. Pilots can log in from a PC or any internet-ready mobile phone to generate a route and file it.

Kurt Lyall, co-founder of RocketRoute.com, said, “We want to give every pilot a flight planning experience that matches the quality enjoyed by the most advanced airlines operating their own flight planning team. We are doing this using internet economics at a low price and challenging today’s market perception.”

Lyall added, “Other competitor offerings are either complex to use or too expensive. What TomTom did to the car navigation market, we would like to repeat for aviation navigation. We estimate that in Europe there are 200,000 pilots and 110,000 of these could benefit from using RocketRoute.”

The industry segments RocketRoute.com is particularly targeting include companies involved in business charters, air taxis and airlines with a small number of aircraft.

Amateur pilot Tony Carter, is the lead investor of the TVIN consortium and has joined the RocketRoute board as a non-executive director. He said, “I’m very aware of the complexity of pre-flight planning and then navigating across controlled airspace.”