Silver Air Cut Conformity Time and Protected Charter Revenue With Bluetail
When Ava Troiani started at Silver Air, she didn’t know what a tail number was. She didn’t know the aviation alphabet. What she did know, on her very first day, was that sorting through boxes of paper logbook records was not the way aviation should work in 2023. Within six months, she’d help convince her company to adopt Bluetail, and the transformation that followed is a story every Part 135 operator should hear.
A Rude Awakening
Silver Air is a Part 135 charter management company. Their revenue model is built on charter flights, which means the speed at which they can safely onboard an aircraft and get it generating revenue is everything. When Ava joined as a Aircraft Quality Assurance Specialist (recruited by a friend who sold her on the glamorous side of private jets) she quickly discovered the sometimes unglamorous reality underneath that promise.
Her first major project was a conformity on a Global 5000 that had been acquired from an overseas operator. The aircraft had been maintained primarily in China and Singapore, and the records followed a completely different organizational structure than what American operators use. A significant portion of the documentation was in Chinese. The team had to manually sort through everything, and they brought in outside contractor Nicole Grigsby just to help manage the workload.
My first day was digging through records. I was like, I don’t know if I can do this job.
— Ava Troiani, Project Manager, Silver Air
That project took months. It was the kind of painful, slow, resource-heavy process that eats into exactly the kind of time a charter operator can’t afford to waste.
The Business Case Was Simple
Ava began questioning the existing approach early, raising concerns and advocating for a more modern solution through discussions with technical leadership. While leadership was initially cautious about securing C-suite approval for Bluetail, she helped shape the conversation by highlighting the operational impact — noting that each additional day a conformity drags on represents lost charter revenue for both Silver Air and the aircraft owner. With support from the Director of Maintenance, Silver Air ultimately moved forward with onboarding Bluetail by mid-2023.
Why Speed Matters
Silver Air’s primary revenue comes from charter flights. The real money is in getting aircraft certified and flying as fast as possible.
“Every extra day an aircraft sits in conformity is revenue we’re not seeing. Bluetail doesn’t just save time — it directly impacts our bottom line.” — John Ishaq, Director of Maintenance, Silver Air
The Immediate Difference
The shift wasn’t gradual. Within days of getting access, Ava was using Bluetail to answer questions that previously would have meant rifling through physical records for hours. The first real test came quickly: the FAA came back with questions on a submitted conformity, and both her direct supervisor, the Chief Inspector and the Director of Maintenance needed to locate specific documentation fast.
Ava found what they needed in a couple of minutes. They responded to the FAA with a pace that set the tone for the relationship right out of the gate.
Keyword Search Changed Everything
For the overseas aircraft that Silver Air continued to onboard after the first Global 5000, the keyword search capability in Bluetail (MACH Search) was — in Ava’s words — critical. Instead of manually flipping through binders trying to match unfamiliar record formats to the documents they actually needed, the team could search directly for what was on the page. What used to be weeks of sorting became minutes of searching.
It also leveled the playing field for someone like Ava, who didn’t come up through aviation. She could search for an 8130 form, pull it up, and build from there — without needing years of institutional knowledge to know where to start looking.
For me personally, it really allowed me to accelerate my understanding and put together those packages quickly.
— Ava Troiani, Project Manager, Silver Air
A Fleet-Wide Compliance Project
After receiving some flags during an FAA DCT audit, Silver Air decided to get ahead of the problem. They launched a roughly six-month project to go through their entire fleet and verify that every Airworthiness Directive, Service Bulletin, and 337 supplemental type certificate was accurately captured and tracked in Bluetail.
How They Built It
The team pulled AD listings directly from the FAA website, formatted them for Bluetail’s compliance module, and loaded them in as an Excel import. Bluetail built the framework automatically. Nicole Grigsby went in and attached the correct documents, added notes, and compiled reports — all within the platform.
The result: a living compliance reference that Silver Air can pull up any time the FAA asks for something. No scrambling, no guesswork. Saving time and saving face with the FAA, should they ever come knocking.
The project fed directly into Silver Air’s quarterly CASS meetings — Continued Analysis and Surveillance Systems — a required FAA regulatory activity. Having a compiled, auditable record ready to go turned what could be a stressful process into a straightforward one.
The Culture Shift
One thing Ava emphasized more than once: Bluetail isn’t just useful because it’s powerful. It’s useful because it’s intuitive. You think about what you’re looking for, and you search for it. That simplicity matters enormously when you’re trying to get a whole team — including people who’ve spent decades working from paper — to actually adopt a new tool.
Nicole, the contractor, became one of the loudest advocates. She started asking when Bluetail would be activated for each new tail before Silver Air even finished the onboarding process. The maintenance team began using it for pre-buy inspections or verifying part history. Day-to-day, the tool wove itself into how Silver Air operates.
Once you kind of cue people up with how simple a lot of these functions are and how much they make your life easier, they do buy in.
— Ava Troiani, Project Manager, Silver Air
What Silver Air Would Tell Other Operators
When asked what she’d say to other Part 135 operators still working from paper or fragmented digital systems, Ava didn’t hedge.
It’s a game changer – get on it. The ability to access an aircraft’s full history in one place is incredibly valuable, and it reflects a broader shift toward digital solutions that will define the future of the industry.
— Ava Troiani, Project Manager, Silver Air
Silver Air’s story isn’t about one big dramatic moment. It’s about the compounding effect of dozens of small wins: a conformity that closes faster, a FAA question answered in minutes instead of days, a compliance audit that doesn’t require weeks of prep. Taken together, those wins don’t just save time. For a Part 135 operator, they protect revenue, reduce risk, and build the kind of operational discipline that regulators and aircraft owners both want to see.