Software for mornings that only fly in a short weather window.

It is one system for the whole flight operation: bookings from every channel, basket seats, passenger weights, pilot and chase crew schedules, balloon and vehicle allocation, waivers, deposits, gift vouchers, and weather rebooking. It exists because a balloon flight is not a generic tour slot. Flights only happen in calm dawn or sunset windows, each basket holds a fixed number of people, and the weather can cancel the whole morning.

Every booking, from your website, a travel site, a partner, or the phone, lands in one calendar. When the last seat in a basket is sold, that flight closes on every channel at once. The seat limit is set per balloon and per flight, so a shared flight and a private charter for the same balloon can never overlap.

The pilot makes the go or no-go call, and the software does the rest. One action moves every passenger on the cancelled flight to a new date, or holds their booking as credit until they pick one, and sends each passenger the message with the new details. Nobody on your team works through the passenger list by phone. The rules for refunds, rebooking, and voucher validity are agreed in writing before the season starts, so a cancelled morning does not become a dispute.

The booking form asks for each passenger's weight before payment, and the system checks it against the per-person limit and the total weight the basket can carry. A booking that breaks the limit is stopped at checkout, not discovered at the launch field. The pilot sees the full passenger list with weights on the morning manifest, so the basket is loaded correctly before anyone climbs in.

Each flight is tied to one balloon, one pilot, one chase crew, and one chase vehicle. The system blocks overlaps, so the same balloon or pilot cannot be booked on two flights at the same time, and it shows what is free before a new flight is offered for sale. Maintenance days and festival days block the calendar the same way, so a balloon away for service is never sold.

Buy a maintained platform when it covers the operation. Platforms built for tour and activity operators already handle time-slot booking, basket capacity, deposits, waivers, vouchers, and sales through travel sites, and that is the right call for most balloon companies. Build custom when the operation breaks the template: unusual weight and loading rules across several balloon sizes, chase crew scheduling that spans launch sites, a reseller or hotel partner workflow no platform supports, or reporting your owners or insurers require. Compare the platform fee on every seat against the cost of owning the system before you decide.

A voucher sells the flight today and holds the value until the recipient chooses a date. The recipient books through the same calendar, the voucher value is applied at checkout, and the expiry and rebooking rules travel with the voucher. Because many balloon rides are bought as gifts, vouchers need the same weather rebooking treatment as ordinary bookings, or a gifted flight becomes a complaint.

The guest pays a deposit at booking and the balance is collected before the flight, online or in person, with the payment record attached to the booking. The system tracks who has paid what, sends reminders for outstanding balances, and settles refunds or credits through the same record when a flight is cancelled. Your team should never have to reconcile deposits from a separate spreadsheet.

Yes. Phone and walk-in bookings go into the same calendar and take the same seats, so a phone sale and a website sale can never take the same place in the basket. The person taking the call sees live availability, collects weights and waivers the same way, and takes the deposit on the same payment record.

The first paid phase may cover a bounded audit, a proof of concept, a recovery plan, or a small first release. The final price depends on how many balloons and launch sites the system covers, how many booking channels it must keep in sync, whether weights, waivers, vouchers, and weather rebooking are in scope, what it needs to connect to, and whether data needs moving over. The agreed phase is priced in writing before it starts.

You judge what you can see, not the code. Every checkpoint is working software you click through yourself, tested against the morning routine agreed at the start: a booking from each channel, a full basket, a weather cancellation moved in one action. Progress is reported in plain language: what changed, what's next, and what it costs. Because you own the code, the accounts, and the operating notes throughout, nothing about the work is locked inside our heads. Our job is to make the work checkable; your job is to check it against your business.

You own the code built for you and control where it lives, the cloud accounts, the data, analytics, and third-party subscriptions. Outside services and open-source pieces keep their own licence terms. The operating notes and handover material stay current so another capable team can take over.