The sale of Jeppesen and ForeFlight closed on Monday and the result is Jeppesen Foreflight, with the former Boeing executive who oversaw them still in charge. The difference is the companies are now owned by “software investment firm” Thoma Bravo and the sale is being called a “return to independence.” In announcing the deal, the new owners also named Brad Surak, who previously led the Digital Aviation Solutions at Boeing, the new CEO of the amalgamated company, who told AvBrief in the accompanying video interview that there will be no dramatic price increases for any products under the new regime. He also said artificial intelligence will be employed to take the services provided by the two companies to the next level. “AI is the north-star for our multi-year roadmap of integrated solutions as we look to build on our proven heritage and move to new horizons,” Surak said in a company news release. “Jeppesen ForeFlight is bringing AI to aviation, from the flight deck to the operations control center driving increased operational efficiency and bolstering safety.” He elaborated on the sorts of services AI might provide in the interview mentioning things like in-flight weather and airport reports and much more situational awareness options.
Surak said many of the staff at both companies are pilots who use the products and they are united in keeping them as the irreplaceable resource they are. He said the new owners understand their importance to the industry and want to improve them, not destroy them. Boeing decided to shed the two companies to bolster its balance sheet and to concentrate on its manufacturing businesses. It sold Jeppesen and Foreflight for $10.55 billion and it looks like most of that will go into the acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems, the contractor that for 20 years has built major components of Boeing, Airbus, and Bombardier jets. Boeing used to own what is now Spirit but sold it 20 years ago to Onex Corporation. Problems at Spirit’s Wichita plant were uncovered during the probe into the loss of a door plug on a 737 MAX in early 2024, and Boeing decided it needed to keep closer tabs on the work there.
“Jeppesen ForeFlight is bringing AI to aviation, from the flight deck to the operations control center driving increased operational efficiency and bolstering safety.”
Reading between the lines, I take that to mean they plan to try to add in AI-generated dispatching to FF so flight departments can get rid of those deadweight dispatchers (<-sarcasm).
The sale of Jepp and FF to a private equity holder will almost certainly mean increased pricing and eventual reduction of quality for the end users, but I do believe it was the right move for Boeing to make. They should indeed focus on engineering and manufacturing.
I won’t say never, because private equity bought ADSBExchange and it has slowly improved, but the normal private equity playbook is to suck every bit of cash out of the company, then toss the hollowed out chunk aside and move on.
I fear the worst for ForeFlight/Jepp here.
Thoma Bravo just spent over ten billion dollars to buy the company, so yeah, they will have to charge a lot to recoup that investment. Economics 101. Maybe they can use AI to help figure out how much to charge their customers.
I suspect that Garmin views this as a good thing since their flight planning software is the largest competitor to ForeFlight. Any big price increases will likely send customers their way.
Sounds like typical bafflegab touting AI since the new shiny thing.