AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2022 - T-11

/ TURBINE PILOT /
Beyond paper
Bluetail's digital, searchable service
BY THOMAS A. HORNE
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDREW BAKER
PAPERWORK . Just the word conveys
a sense of mindless drudgery. There's
some truth in that, as many aircraft
owners well understand. Preserving
maintenance records for the life of an
airplane can snowball over the months
and years, leaving owners with what can
be disorganized boxes and stacks of logbooks
and other paper documents, easy
to neglect and frequently stashed away
in a corner somewhere.
But neglect them, and you risk some
serious repercussions. Incomplete
maintenance, airworthiness directives,
service bulletins, and other such records
can seriously reduce resale values, void
maintenance plans, negate warranty coverage,
and create numerous other blocks
to a clear title. " I've owned my PC-12 for
20-plus years, and other planes before
that, and I always had an anxiety about
logbooks, " said Sarasota, Florida-based
pilot Phil Rosenbaum. " I knew I needed a
backup to the logs and paper documents...
and if they were ever lost it could mean a
$250,000 reduction in value if I want to
sell it. " His Pilatus service center keeps a
set of duplicates in a fireproof safe, which
is a great idea, but it meant that they
weren't accessible unless he was on site.
And even then, it would mean a tedious
manual search of hundreds of documents.
In 2020, two aviation-minded former
Apple executives-Stuart Illian and
Roberto Guerrieri-founded Bluetail
Inc., a company that digitizes aircraft
records and stores them on a secure
cloud-based platform. Bluetail's service
begins when a customer brings logbooks
and other paper documents to one of the
company's 120 scanning centers-or a
Bluetail specialist comes to the customer's
location and does the scanning. After
that, customers and/or their maintenance
providers can keep the records current
by several means. Using your iPhone or
Android device, you can take photos of
maintenance documents and upload
them using the Bluetail app. Or use your
computer to email a PDF file to Bluetail.
One big feature is what Bluetail calls its
MACH search capability. This uses optical
character recognition (OCR) and machine
learning to allow documents to be stored,
sorted, and searched several ways. The
OCR will even recognize an airframe and
powerplant mechanic's or inspector's signatures.
Let's say you want to look up any
records that mention a specific part, form,
inspection, or date of service. The search
can locate all these and allow customers
to share the information with the maintenance
and repair organization, flight
department, or other owners they designate.
This can come in very handy if you
remember that a certain component was
overhauled, but didn't write down the part
number, don't have the form 8130 at hand,
and can't remember when the work was
performed, let alone who did the signoff.
MACH search will quickly recognize
all those details and let you share them.
Same thing with airworthiness directive,
service bulletin, and other compliance
documents.
This kind of capability becomes vital
when more than one airplane is involved.
Jim Taylor has a Cessna 421 and a Cessna
182 based at his home field at Camarillo,
California, and five other aircraft at various
nearby airports. " I'm not much of
a laptop-iPhone guy, " he said. " So, I had
two banker's boxes' worth of paper downloaded,
and now I don't have to spend
hours and hours, say, looking for when I
last had some generator work done. "
Bluetail made the news recently
when Jet It, a fractional ownership operation
with access to more than 1,000 jets
ranging from Citation CJ3s to HondaJets
to Falcon 50s, signed up for the service.
" We have thousands of pages of maintenance
information contained in countless
paper logbooks, " said Glenn Gonzales, Jet
It's CEO and founder. " Having all of that
information digital, searchable, and sharable,
anywhere in the world by Bluetail
will enable our mechanics to perform
inspections, and maintenance faster, more
efficiently, and at a lower cost. "
Bluetail isn't just for turbine airplanes.
After an initial setup fee, the company's
per-aircraft monthly charges are $69 for
piston singles, twins, and warbirds; $99
for light jets and turboprops; $149 for
mid-size jets and helicopters; and $249 for
large-cabin jets. tom.horne@aopa.org
bluetail.aero
AOPA PILOT / August 2022
T-11
http://www.bluetail.aero
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2022
