ELP Aviation joins the pack of people and company’s celebrating birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and special milestones under quarantine. In April, ELP celebrated its ten-year anniversary. As I sit in my current workspace (my bedroom), I cannot help but reflect on the last ten years; how we have evolved and the ways we are still the same. One thing that is the same today, which hopefully will change soon, is my workspace. Due to quarantine, I like most of us, is working in the corners of our house to escape the barking dogs and kids yelling at their friends on their Xbox-live.
15
May
The Story of ELP
ELP Celebrates 10 years
Ten years ago, ELP Aviation was born in my bedroom. My wife Linda and I took out all the money we had in our 401 and decided we were going to make a go at it. I had 30+ years’ experience in the airline industry and my wife had 10 years’ experience as a college professor and creator of virtual classes for several colleges. So, we put our talents together and offered our customers aviation software consulting and custom e-learning materials. As time went by, we contracted a talented, experienced, world renowned Crystal Report Developer, who is still with us today. With my aviation knowledge and his expert programming skills, we began to create simple and complex reporting tools.
Linda and I performed all sorts of tasks in those first few years. At one time we were the payroll department for one Carrier and the Crew Planning Department for another. Linda wrote training curriculums and manuals for new hire Crew Schedulers, Ground Handling crews, Load Balancers, and Maintenance crews. As our reputation grew, and people we worked with moved on to different airlines, we began to build a larger customer base. Then, one faithful day in 2013, our friends at Hawaiian Airlines called asking if we had a solution to the new 117 regulations coming out in Jan 2014. My programmer and I put our brains together and ELP Aviation Software began. Before we knew it, we had 8 airlines knocking at our door to provide our 117 solution. I called my old boss, Jeff Aldrich, and asked, “Do you want a job, because the flood gates just opened, and I need help!” Jeff came on-board and a few years later became a part owner of the company.
We started to create new solutions, every year getting more and more complex. Until one day, to my surprise, I have a room full of developers in an office building I own, and an amazing suite of products that I wish I had when I worked in the trenches of an SOC. We partnered with our local University, Wichita State University, and every year we add new developers with new talents. We went from a Crystal shop to a Crystal, Angular, Java, Web-based, .Net, etc. shop.
So now we are back to where I started this story. It is 2020 and I am sitting in my bedroom looking around at my wife who is writing a manual for one of our products, and I am thinking, “Wow haven’t we come full circle.” Ten years later, I am still working in my bedroom and my wife is still writing manuals. But now I am directing a full staff of developers, creating custom solutions for over 20 carriers internationally and domestically, and starting a new R&D department solely dedicated to creating new products that do not exist in the marketplace. What an evolution!
But you know the saying, just as much as things change, they also stay the same. So now let me share with you what has been a constant in our 10 years and will be for the next 10 years. We always have been a family owned company who sees our customers as friends and colleagues. We care about their struggles and have an obsessive desire to solve their pain points. Just like we did when we only had one, we spend time with every one of our customers, learning the ins and outs of their operation. We are big enough now to solve any complex issue thrown at us, and small enough to still care like it is the only important issue that matters. We still enjoy a practical joke and a fun working atmosphere.
Someone once told us to stay in business and be profitable we would have to change our business philosophy and our business model. They said, “You will need to create tools that serve the masses and a customer ticketing system to push issues through in an automated fashion.” Well, we are profitable, and we continue to create custom solutions that serve the needs of each individual airline. Our business philosophy is one thing we will not change. We will not compromise on our service and dedication to our customers.