iPhone in Business

Dexter brings over 30 years of flight experience to his job as Director of Operations for Airship Ventures, a young California company founded by husband-and-wife team Brian and Alexandra Hall. In the heart of Silicon Valley, the Halls have introduced a little bit of adventure: a giant airship that makes tours around the San Francisco Bay.

In the air and in the office, Airship Ventures turns to iPhone for almost every aspect of their business. For the pilots, it begins with flight planning using aviation apps downloaded from the App Store. “I can pull up sectional charts,” Dexter says. “If I hear that we have a new operational requirement to go to, say, Long Beach, I can pull up the map for Long Beach on the iPhone. And that helps me plan the trip.”

Weather reports, of course, are mission-critical for flight. “I use AeroWeather to access aviation weather forecasting on the iPhone,” Dexter says. “It’s important to know what the wind is doing each hour.” His weather app also gives him the Terminal Area Forecast, a wind report for any airfield he might be flying into. “That’s extremely useful for a Zeppelin pilot.”

To help operate the Zeppelin, Dexter uses iConvert, an application that can toggle between metric and English measurements. “The Zeppelin is a European aircraft, and the figures are in metric,” he says. “With iConvert, I can go from kilograms to pounds and inches of mercury to millibars.”

Pilot Katherine Board, the only female Zeppelin pilot in the world, uses iPhone to consult the FAA website, which, among other things, broadcasts temporary flight restrictions. “We can look up whether there might be a restriction around a stadium, or an area where there’s a presidential visit,” she says.

“One of the distinct pleasures I had with iPhone was finding the applications that were useful to me as a pilot.”

She’s also glad to have iPhone on board for communicating with the ground. “We need to stay in contact with the crew at all times,” she explains. “And sometimes, especially in the Bay Area, where there are a lot of hills, we can get out of radio range. So we just use our iPhones to text the crew.”

Blogging from 1200 feet

When they first got iPhone, Co-Founders Brian and Alexandra Hall knew they would use it to help run their business. But they were surprised to discover that it can be a powerful marketing tool. They’re big fans of the camera on iPhone, which allows them to post photos on their blog from the air.

“One of the best things about the iPhone has been the ability to blog as things happen,” Alexandra says. “So when we’re on the airship, and something cool happens, I can use the iPhone camera to capture it and email it straight to our blog. And that instantaneous connection we have now with our customers is really valuable.”

Recently, local radio station KGO came aboard the Eureka to broadcast a morning show. “Because I had my iPhone, I was able to take snapshots of the crew and the presenters from before the sun came up until the end of the broadcast,” Alexandra says. “It added a great deal of value to our blog, because both listeners of the radio show and people who are interested in the airship were following along with the story as it happened.”

Keeping tabs on the business

As CEO, Alexandra Hall is at the helm of a very busy ship, with 35 employees and one rather large dirigible. “My iPhone helps me keep in touch with what’s going on in the company at all times,” she says. “And because we’re a 24/7 company, that’s really important.”

Every day, she uses iPhone to review Airship Ventures’ enterprise software. “I can look at the sales statistics on SalesForce.com and I can look at LightSpeed, which is the point-of-sale software that we use for ticketing. So I can get an up-to-the-minute peek of what’s going on with the business, just by using iPhone.”

Whether they’re mapping flight routes, checking weather, live-blogging from above San Francisco, or reviewing important business data, the team at Airship Ventures finds iPhone integral to every aspect of their business. “The iPhone just fits into our work style,” Brian Hall says. “It’s a part of almost everything we do. And I think we’re only at the tip of exploring what it can do for Airship Ventures.”