Operating for over 30 years, Sounds Air is a premier regional airline based in Wellington, New Zealand. Employing over 60 staff members, the airline flies a mixed fleet of 9 aircraft—including Cessna Caravans and Pilatus PC12s—to key destinations like Christchurch, Picton, Blenheim, and Nelson.
Providing both scheduled passenger air transport services and charters, Sounds Air serves a diverse mix of domestic, international, leisure, and business travelers.
The challenge
Overcoming an “organized shambles” of paper and pencils.
Before modernizing their operations, Sounds Air relied on a physical card system managed entirely with paper, pencils, and erasers.
While this manual approach functioned in the early days, it created a ceiling on the airline’s potential. Scalability was practically impossible, and ensuring accuracy for passengers became a daily struggle. Leadership recognized that operating as a true, scalable airline required leaving the paper system behind and finding a digital foundation that could unify the entire operation.
The solution
The operational “glue” holding the airline together.
As Takeflite’s initial setup client in 2002, Sounds Air implemented the software and has grown alongside it for decades. Today, Takeflite acts as the central hub for the entire 60-person organization.
Our business is now open 24 hours a day. Payments are made every day. It has revolutionized our business and it is no exaggeration to say that without it we would never have been able to sustain the growth we have experienced. We have gone from 14,000 to 100,000 passengers in 13 years.
— Andrew Crawford, General Manager, New Zealand
Operations staff rely on it for schedule, maintenance planning, and flight & duty rostering. Front-of-house teams use it for passenger check-in, manifests, and center of gravity (COG) calculations. Flight crews use it for flight planning, while the reservations team utilizes the SAAG screen for instant seat visibility. Instead of disconnected systems, Takeflite provides a single, unified source of truth for the rapidly moving airline.
The result
An always-on airline experiencing exponential growth.
By integrating Takeflite into every facet of the business, Sounds Air successfully transitioned from a localized operation into a highly efficient, modern airline.
100,000
Annual passengers (up from 14k)
24/7
Booking availability & revenue generation
The customer experience was completely transformed; passengers can now seamlessly book tickets on their smartphones or tablets 24/7 via the Takeflite booking portal. Internally, the software keeps the dynamic, constantly changing team perfectly synced and up to date. Most importantly, this digital transformation removed all barriers to growth, enabling the airline to increase their passenger volume by over 600% while operating seamlessly around the clock.
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