As a Citation Jet owner, Jason Talley felt it should be easier and cheaper for aircraft owners to track aircraft maintenance. “I was not happy with the solutions available. Everything had a legacy feel and frankly was too expensive. But I liked that, I like looking for ways to solve frustrations and problems.”

His solution was to buy a small tracking company that became SierraTrax. That was in 2017, Just four years later SierraTrax has more than 1,000 customers and has been sold to Jet Support Services, Inc. (JSSI).

Talley is a difficult man to categorise. As well as the aircraft maintenance tracking company, he is also the founder of a cloud computing company, the chairman and CEO of a Southern California burger chain and a serial aviation entrepreneur and a keen pilot. He also founded JetFuelX, a fuel analytics company that he sold to ForeFlight 2015.

These renaissance interests fit in well with JSSI which is a much harder company to categorise than it was a few years ago. Best known for its independent hourly cost maintenance programmes it now also has JSSI Parts & Leasing, JSSI Advisory Services; and Conklin & de Decker.

“We have been looking at the maintenance tracking space for several years. When we launched tip-to-tail maintenance programmes it was all about simplifying ownership experience and this is exactly what SierraTrax does as well,” says Neil Book, chairman and CEO of JSSI. “It fits in with our overall strategy of simplifying customer experiences and making the process more efficient. We looked at all the different companies and launching our own, but the simplicity of the SierraTrax product and its fast growth made it the one we wanted.”

This is Book’s fourth acquisition in four years but the first since private equity firm GTCR became an investor in November 2020. GTCR has a unique understanding of maintenance tracking after buying CAMP Systems, the market leader with more than 15,000 aircraft, in 2012. In 2016 it sold CAMP for a significant profit to Hearst Corporation, the media company.

SierraTrax has a strong customer base with Textron owners and hopes to grow this with other types. JSSI has enrolled more than 10% of the world’s business jets on its Hourly Cost Maintenance Programs and oversees more than 10,000 maintenance events per year.

SierraTrax offers a simple scanning service for owners looking to move paper records onto its system. It has various scanning sites across the US where owners can leave paper documents and have fully digital records within two weeks.

“Once they are digital, owners can make limited access of these available to buyers or brokers to speed up transactions,” says Talley.

Talley plans to stay at JSSI after the sale. “We are very excited to have Jason and his very strong team joining us,” says Book “We are also encouraging him and all our team to find other industry problems that we can solve together.”

• – JSSI continues diversification from maintenance programmes with aircraft maintenance tracking company acquisition
•  – SierraTrax fourth largest aircraft maintenance tracking company and fast growing
• – JSSI shareholder GTCR is former owner of CAMP Systems.

Above: Jason Talley is a serial aviation entrepreneur.

Below: Neil Book is chairman and CEO of JSSI.