Mohammed Husary, founder and Executive President of UAS International Trip Support, is very excited by the company’s ‘forthcoming super app’. He found time in his hectic schedule to share its vision with EVA
“I’ve always been fascinated by technology. I always wanted futuristic processes and a futuristic look and feel for the company that I envisioned.” Mohammed Husary was speaking with passion about the company he wanted to build as a 21-year old entrepreneur. Today, that company is UAS International Trip Support.
Husary’s ambition at that young age was impressive. He says that growing up in Damascus, the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city, provided the foundation for his determination. “People from Damascus have entrepreneurship in their DNA, based on thousands of years of business experience. I remember starting my first entrepreneurial enterprise aged seven, selling chocolates in my neighbourhood and thinking about how to gain competitive advantage.”
Aviation might also have been in Husary’s DNA. Having studied in the US in the 1950s, his father helped build modern commercial aviation infrastructure across the Middle East. “As a family we were born into aviation. After high school I started a job with one of my father’s friends,” Husary recalls. “I loved the idea of servicing private jets, but the company provided only local services and my entrepreneurial spirit wanted it to go global.
“I took the concepts and created that global presence, but after a few years I felt the company ethos and team were holding me back. So, in 2000, I started UAS, with a futuristic vision to build a powerhouse for everything around trip support and aviation services, and an emphasis on quality and technology.”
The aim from the outset was to always strive for progress. Husary was never going to be satisfied if UAS was simply good at what it did. His was a vision of constant development, always delivering what the customer needed, but with the latest technology empowering the UAS team to do better.
“Of course, we had no idea in 2000 what would be possible now. But my character is one of strategic outlook and big, ambitious goals. I never like to set my sights on something small, and I’ve been that way since I was young. It presents me and the team around me with the constant challenge of meeting that ambition,” Husary admits.
After 25 years of pushing technological boundaries, it seems reasonable that even Husary’s copious enthusiasm might wane, yet he still speaks energetically and knowledgeably about AI and the digital landscape. It must be tough to maintain that elevated level of personal motivation, and even more so to inspire that same enthusiasm in his team, so how is it accomplished? The answer is unexpected.
“I’m a big advocate of lifelong learning. I love education. When I started UAS I had to drop out of college, but once the company was successful I went back to study. Later, I earned an Executive MBA from Hult University, Boston then, wondering what to do next, I went to Harvard. There I completed the Owner/President Management programme offered by Harvard Business School. I also join organisations where I can meet and network with people of different ages from different industries, so I’m always learning.
“I think it’s very important for my generation to be in the centre between the younger and older generations. If we don’t stay connected with the younger people we’ll look like dinosaurs to them, and that will impact business. For that reason I’ve run a few start-up companies too, deliberately choosing technology start-ups so I could be exposed to those technologies and emerging ideas. Now I’ve somehow become an expert, and my other company has a full team of Gen Zs who are very good at AI and all those things.”
Predictably, UAS has an internship programme with local schools, and supports local schools connected with Embry-Riddle. Husary also takes invitations from schools, going in to speak about aviation and entrepreneurship with children as young as 12. “I love it,” he says, “with a passion.”
Digital proliferation
The continuing proliferation of apps and digital platforms means there is now one or the other or both for almost any industry task. Business aviation veterans enjoy telling tales of how they once held information in multiple places, including their memory, while app developers delight in centralising the same information for efficiency and speed. Stories beginning: “I remember when we used to run everything with shelves of A4 binders full of printouts, email trails and Post-It notes,” are familiar, but now it seems there is a real risk of running everything through multiple apps and a couple of platforms. One must worry that burgeoning technology is creating a digital version of yesterday’s complexities. Husary certainly does.
“The aviation ecosystem is very fragmented and very diversified. There is charter, MRO, dispatch, scheduling, ground handling, fuel, trip support… What we’re doing at UAS – and you should watch out for it because it’s my strategy for the next five years – is building a super digital platform. “It has two components. TMSe – Trip Management System – is our backend team support system. It’s automated and connected to all our service providers. The second component is GTMX, for Global Trip Management X, with the X because there was a GTM before and this is a more advanced version. This is the client interface. It will provide an end-to-end experience for anything to do with aviation services, whether they are an individual looking to charter an aircraft, or a professional running operations that wants to schedule crew, request services, manage flight planning and more, including generating ESG reports. It will be AI-powered for optimising routes, fuel burn, CO2 emissions and more.”
Taken at face value, terms like ‘AI-powered’ feel very futuristic, but ought to be tempered with a sprinkling of reality. AI will only ever be as good as the data with which it works and the questions it is asked. So, how will UAS employ it?
“We have 25 years of real-world data. I’ve hired a data scientist and we’re putting together a team to take all the data we’ve collected and plug it into our machine learning. Since 2000, UAS has been very busy providing services not only for private jets and general aviation, but also for commercial cargo. The beauty of that data is it shows trends, during the 2008 recession and during Covid, for example, and that’s what will inform our AI.”
But how will clients know the right questions to ask? “We’re going to build the use case for our AI based on our understanding of our clients’ requirements. We’ll provide the dashboard and analytics to help them optimise their operations, reduce emissions and manage costs. It will be a simple user experience.”
The proliferation of digital aviation products has already produced several excellent apps and platforms. For UAS to reinvent so many wheels when others have already done so would make little sense, a fact Husary acknowledges.
“Our strategy is to integrate with other systems. We’ve already integrated with Avianis, Portside and others. We can’t build everything from scratch, but also, clients are already happily using those products. So we want to give them a ‘super app’ that adapts to their needs and connects with the systems they already use. Whatever flight planning system they use will work with GTMX, for example, because we are connecting to the leading products through API [application programming interface] integrations.”
The solution Husary describes simplifies an incredibly complex set of transactions and it is tempting to ask why a trip support company like UAS is taking the lead on integration, rather than an IT specialist. Husary’s answer is profound: “What we are trying to do has not been done before because it is so complicated. Also, anyone who wants to achieve it needs to already be delivering all the services, they need to understand how they work. Few service providers can match our diversity of operation or service portfolio, including fuel handling, dispatch, security, hotels, transport, charter, ground handling and so on. This places us in a unique position. We are the powerhouse one-stop shop that does everything and that puts us in the best place to build an ecosystem that’s good for all.”
Through all his excitement for the technology, Husary remains convinced that the human team at UAS will remain fundamental to its business proposition. “There is a big misconception that AI and technology will replace people. Technology is an enabler, not a replacement. Humans will always be there; the human touch will always be needed. People are at the centre of our digital transformation strategy, they are the key component. The backend of our system will allow our people to do what they already do, but better, and their input will power the client-facing part.”
Many more questions about Husary and his super app spring to mind but he is a busy man and time is getting short. Finally, then, when might the app be finished? “Never,” he laughs. “I started this eight years back and now we’re accelerating development. TMSe is pretty mature and the emphasis is on GTMX. We expect to launch the first version of GTMX at NBAA-BACE, but of course development will never stop because we’ll always be reacting to feedback from clients and updating it.”