Software maker flying
high with Voyager

Snohomish County Business Journal/JOHN WOLCOTT “There’s nothing but blue sky ahead of us,” said Jim Smith, Seattle Avionics Software’s national sales manager, after reading a stellar review of Voyager given by Aviation Consumer.com.

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

Seattle Avionics Software in Bothell is gaining national attention with its Voyager flight-planning software.

Voyager’s fast performance and variety of options are getting increasing notice in the aviation community, with more than 3,000 pilots using the program, a substantial foothold in the active electronic flight-planning marketplace.

In January, for instance, the staff at Aero-News.Net gave Voyager 3.0 its Product of the Year award, noting it is “the most-used piece of aero-software we own. … The entire program does it all … seamlessly and backed up by a company that is getting rave reviews for customer support.”

Then Eclipse Aviation announced it had chosen Voyager for its flight-planning partner for the JetComplete program that Eclipse offers for pilots of high-performance aircraft. Soon, Seattle Avionics forged marketing partnerships with King Schools, the world’s leading producer of aviation training videos and computer software; AvShop, an Internet marketer of aviation products; and Hilton Software, a world leader in PDA aviation software for general aviation, commercial and military pilots.

Voyager’s latest boost to prominence came in August when Aviation Consumer.com, an independent online source for impartial, detailed evaluations of aircraft, avionics and aviation products, surprised Seattle Avionics with an unsolicited analysis of the Voyager software that summed it up as “easily the top choice” in head-to-head comparisons with its competitors.

“There’s nothing but blue sky ahead of us,” said an enthusiastic Jim Smith, Seattle Avionics’ national sales manager, when he read the review. “The (national) market has only been aware of us for the past year, but with boosts like this and more promotion, my plan is to at least double our sales during the coming year.”

Perhaps the main reason for the software’s success, aside from expert programming, is that the company’s founders and employees are all experienced pilots as well. Smith, a Lynnwood city councilman for nearly 20 years, also is president of the Washington Pilots Association. He gained his marketing experience by building his own company, Unicam Entertainment, into the top booking outfit in the Northwest, producing as many as 700 live music shows a year.

His planes, a Beechcraft Bonanza and a Cessna 172 Skyhawk, are based at Paine Field. He said he’s still finding it hard to believe he’s being paid for talking with other pilots about flying and aircraft, his favorite topics.

One of two founders of the company, chief executive Steve Podradchik, began thinking about flight software programs when he was earning his private pilot’s license in 1999 and making cross-country trips using what he thought was cumbersome software.

Unlike most pilots, Podradchik has the background to do something about it, as a former manager at Microsoft and then the founder and chief executive of Marketwave Corp. as well as being involved in other software and multimedia firms.

Co-founder and President John Rutter has been active for a decade in general aviation, but his interest in aviation began when he was only 9, flying in his uncle’s Cessna 172 in Colorado.

“The company’s founders developed this software basically because, after looking at other products, they decided there had to be a better way to produce aviation flight software to make flying easier and more fun,” Smith said.

Voyager’s screen depicts how a planned flight route will be affected by time, weather and terrain, compiling all of the available information into useful visual data to help pilots make more informed decisions about their intended flight.

The newest version of Voyager — FreeFlight — is a basic flight planner that Smith said is more sophisticated than other free planners being offered. On the ground, the program loads real-time data from the Internet to plan a flight, but it can operate in flight, too, on a laptop or Tablet PC without further online connections. The program comes with more than 160 aircraft profiles, so data can be instantly logged into the software.

More information is available at www.seattleavionics.com, by sending e-mail to info@seattleavionics.com or by calling 425-806-0249.