Tropiq FMS vs AirplaneManager
AirplaneManager was the right tool when your fleet was two Cessnas and a whiteboard. You've added a CJ3+, a King Air, and three more pilots since then. Here's what's changed.
AM covers the scheduling basics — trips, crew, logs, expenses. It stops there.
No compliance toolkit (FRAT, W&B, SIFL, fuel cascade). No modern dispatch workflows (auto-tags, conflict detection, auto-reposition). No pilot self-claim, no owner portal, no live tripsheet, no FBO directory, no EFB.
One-click migration with Playwright + stealth. Resume from checkpoint if anything fails. Your AM users auto-provision into Tropiq. Most operators are live in a weekend.
Five workflows. Compared.
What your team does every day — in each tool.
Quoting
Email-in, web form, Avinode all land in one funnel. Multi-aircraft fit modal scores 8 dimensions and ranks by best fit or lowest cost. Live fuel by program (CAA/Avfuel) auto-routes by Part 91/135 eligibility. Public quote link with expiry, tracking, and one-click accept.
Hourly rate × hours, manually plus fuel guess. No multi-channel intake. No quote link — you email a PDF.
Scheduling
Calendar overlays computed flag codes — PIC_MISSING, CATERING_PENDING, FLIGHT_RELEASE_MISSING. Crew picker filters by type rating with currency-during-trip warnings. Conflicts split hard / soft / stranded. Auto-reposition iterates chained mismatches.
Calendar shows trip blocks. Conflicts surface as text warnings, no severity. Stranding isn't detected. Repositions are manual.
Dispatch
Six auto-tag rules flag what's missing. Pilot self-claim by magic link fills an open leg with a contractor in one click. Hotel and ground book through FlightBridge from inside the trip; confirmed cost lands as a draft expense. FRAT auto-populates from weather, NOTAMs, winds, duty, runway, grounding.
No auto-tags, no FRAT, no flight release. Hotel and ground are a phone call and a spreadsheet. Contractor outreach is email.
Flying
Live tripsheet with METAR/TAF/NOTAMs, FBO phone + frequency, fuel plan honoring the three-level reserve cascade, wind-corrected block time. Fleet map with ADS-B. CAMP/Traxxall/Veryon grounding state surfaces on the tripsheet.
Static tripsheet. Weather and NOTAMs live in ForeFlight, separately. No fleet map, no MX sync.
Closing out
Expenses auto-draft from FlightBridge confirmations. Invoices reconcile against actual flight logs. SIFL auto-computes for personal trips. Owner portal shows statements with charter revenue, SIFL value, and management fees split out.
Invoices generate from trip totals. SIFL is a separate Excel exercise every April. No owner portal — statements get emailed as PDFs.
Where Tropiq wins.
The four pitches that close the AM deal.
FRAT, W&B, SIFL, fuel cascade — native.
AM has none of these. You ran them in spreadsheets your chief pilot built in 2014. Tropiq computes them live: FRAT pulls weather and NOTAMs into the score, W&B does point-in-polygon envelope checks, SIFL applies IRS rate tables automatically, the fuel cascade enforces FAR 91.167 floor in code.
Auto-tags, pilot self-claim, hotel/ground inside the trip.
The system tells you what's missing instead of waiting for you to notice. Contractors accept legs in one click via magic link. Hotels and ground transport book through FlightBridge and auto-create their own draft expenses.
Weather, NOTAMs, FBOs — on the tripsheet.
Per-leg METAR/TAF/NOTAMs, fuzzy-matched FBO directory with phone and frequency, fuel plan with reserve cascade and headwind-corrected block time. Dispatch doesn't open a second app.
One-click. Resumable. Encrypted credentials.
Playwright + stealth bypasses Cloudflare and crawls your fleet, crew, trips, estimates, expenses, invoices, accounts, and passengers. Phase-by-phase checkpoints. Cancel and resume mid-run. Your AM credentials are AES-256-GCM at rest, never logged.
Feature by feature.
The exhaustive list. — means the feature isn't there at all.
| Feature | Tropiq FMS | AirplaneManager |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-leg trip lifecycle | ✓ | Overloaded status int |
| Crew roster + assignment | ✓ | ✓ |
| Estimates + invoices | ✓ | ✓ |
| Expense tracking | ✓ | Partial |
| Calendar / scheduling view | ✓ | ✓ |
| Flight log entry | ✓ | ✓ |
| Status × Category split | ✓ | — |
| Six auto-tag rules (need_catering, need_eapis, …) | ✓ | — |
| Conflict detection — aircraft, crew, stranding | ✓ | — |
| Auto-repositioning suggester (iterated) | ✓ | — |
| Pilot self-claim by magic link | ✓ | — |
| Empty-leg publishing per channel (Avinode + public) | ✓ | — |
| eAPIS / customs with crossing time + point + direction | ✓ | — |
| Hotel + ground booked inside the trip | FlightBridge | — |
| Overnight → expense auto-bridge | ✓ | — |
| FRAT auto-populated from weather/NOTAMs/duty | ✓ | — |
| Flight Release with chief-pilot sign gating | ✓ | — |
| Three-level fuel reserve cascade (FAR → org → aircraft) | ✓ | — |
| Weight & Balance with envelope check | ✓ | — |
| SIFL auto-calculation | ✓ | — |
| Duty time — 5 rolling windows, FAR-cited | ✓ | Partial |
| Fatigue scoring (circadian, workload, rest) | ✓ | — |
| Multi-aircraft fit + cost comparison | ✓ | — |
| Live fuel pricing + program eligibility (CAA, contract) | ✓ | — |
| MTOW-tiered FBO fee resolution | ✓ | — |
| Wind-aware block time (forecast + seasonal fallback) | ✓ | — |
| Public quote link with token expiry + tracking | ✓ | — |
| Multi-channel quote intake (email/web/Avinode) | ✓ | — |
| Live tripsheet (METAR/TAF/NOTAM, FBO contact) | ✓ | — |
| Fleet map with ADS-B | ✓ | — |
| MX read-only sync (CAMP/Traxxall/Veryon) | ✓ | — |
| Companion EFB | Tropic EFB available | — |
| Owner portal — statements, MX, trip requests | ✓ | — |
| aircraft_owner RBAC role | ✓ | — |
| One-click AM migration (Playwright + stealth) | ✓ | — |
| Resume from checkpoint mid-migration | ✓ | — |
| Encrypted credentials at rest (AES-256-GCM) | ✓ | — |
| Modern web app (2026 stack) | ✓ | Built circa 2009 |
| Target fleet size | 3-30 aircraft | Solo + small ops |
| Pricing transparency | Published | Quote on request |
Where AirplaneManager wins.
Two things, and we'll say them plainly.
AM has years of your data and years of your team's muscle memory. That's real switching cost. Our answer is the one-click migration — we don't ask you to start over.
Your team knows where every menu lives in AM. Tropiq has a different mental model — verbs, not modules. The learning curve is short (most operators are productive in a day), but it's real.
Who should pick what.
- · You're a solo Part 91 owner-operator with one aircraft and no plans to grow
- · You don't operate Part 135 charter and don't need compliance tooling
- · You're already running compliance in spreadsheets and don't want to change
- · You run Part 135 charter and need FRAT, flight release, fuel cascade
- · You have 3-30 aircraft and your operation is growing
- · You're tired of Excel for W&B and SIFL and paper for duty time
- · You want dispatch, compliance, and financials in one product
Ready to switch?
One-click migration. Resumable. Most operators are live in a weekend.
Plan Your Migration