Jeppesen ForeFlight, based in Arapahoe County, laid off a large number of employees on Wednesday, raising concerns among some airline pilots who rely heavily on the company’s products, according to industry and employee reports.
The company has declined to provide the number of jobs being eliminated, and it hasn’t filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which is required when a company eliminates 50 or more jobs at a single work site.
Citing anonymous employee reports, one industry publication, AeroTime, estimated the cuts were around 30%, which would translate to more than 540 workers from an estimated headcount of more than 1,800 employees.
Employees commenting on Reddit put the layoffs at closer to 40% to 50% of the headcount, according to Aviation International News.
“I was laid off via email, after 20 years with the company … classy place,” said one former employee on Reddit.
The company disputed those figures while declining to provide a precise number.
“Jeppesen ForeFlight made changes to streamline our operating model, which will support continued investment in product innovation and customer experience. While we are not sharing specific numbers, the current percentages being relayed through media are misleading and overstated,” the company said in a statement.
The company said it was supporting all affected employees with severance, benefits and resources through the transition and that “safe, reliability and our customer commitments remain unchanged and remain our top priority.”
JeppesenForeFlight is the leading provider of navigation and other software to the airline industry. Some pilots expressed concerns about the ongoing reliability and future quality of the company’s popular products, while others were taking a wait-and-see attitude, according to AeroTimes.
Last fall, the private equity firm Thoma Bravo paid $10.55 billion in cash for Boeing’s Digital Aviation Solutions, which included ForeFlight, Jeppesen, AerData and Oz Runways.
On Nov. 3, Thoma Bravo announced it had combined Jeppesen and ForeFlight into a new company called Jeppesen ForeFlight. Shortly after, the company’s CEO Brad Surek raised eyebrows when he told AvBrief.com that AI would be the company’s “north star” as it created a roadmap for future offerings.
Thoma Bravo describes itself as one of the largest software-focused investors in the world, with over $181 billion in assets under management as of June 30.
The firm has generated strong returns for its investors, but is also known for aggressive cost-cutting and large and undisclosed layoffs. Among the euphemisms it has used in the past are “strategic organizational changes” and “staffing optimization effort.”
In 1934, airline pilot Elrey Borge Jeppesen founded a company to provide the first standardized aviation navigation charts, which proved a hit with other pilots.
The company moved its headquarters from Salt Lake City to Denver in the 1940s. In the 1960s, it set up shop at 55 Inverness Drive East, where it has remained.
Jeppesen was such an important part of Colorado’s aviation history that Denver named the terminal of its airport after him and erected a statue in the terminal in tribute in 1995.
In 2000, Boeing acquired the company and expanded its offerings into flight planning, crew management, airline operations software and navigation data for commercial, business and military aviation.
ForeFlight was a separate company founded in 2007 in Houston and was behind a popular flight-planning and electronic flight bag application used by pilots. Boeing acquired the company in 2019.
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