The ability to choose the right drop pattern, divert the right aircraft and prove the right invoice often depends on seconds.
TracPlus built its reputation supplying those seconds through reliable tracking.
The company now handles more than ten million flight hours from 6,000-plus assets in over 45 countries and adds roughly one million position reports every day.
That scale feeds FireFlyte – a cloud platform designed solely for aerial firefighting.
Since the first quiet roll-out in early 2024, the system has logged 171 million litres of suppressant drops and is already in daily use on three continents.
In this conversation for Fire & Safety Journal Americas, John O’Hara, who chaired TracPlus for five years before becoming chief executive in October 2024, explains how the new software grew from 15 years of live-tracking experience and why better data, not extra aircraft, may give agencies their biggest win next season.
TracPlus helps wildfire agencies and their operators run safer, leaner missions at any scale.
We track more than 6,000 aircraft, vehicles and ground units in over 45 countries.
The database behind that work holds ten million flight hours and we add about a million location points each day.
A dedicated engineering team – twelve people in two offices – has spent more than a hundred person-years writing software that sits on top of sixty-five different tracking devices, so customers can keep the hardware they already trust.
We also manage the national aerial-firefighting data services for Australia’s NAFC and New Zealand’s FENZ, which keeps us close to front-line needs.
With more than 880 million position reports over fifteen years, TracPlus supplies mission-critical intelligence to 700 organisations – including Australia’s NAFC and New Zealand’s FENZ – across 45 countries.
The company integrates live tracking, operational reporting and analytics to help agencies deploy resources faster, improve safety and protect lives and property when wildfire season peaks.
FireFlyte is the sum of fifteen years of lessons.
We already collect streams of “ops normal” data; the work now is to add context and surface the single detail that matters at the exact moment it matters.
Take revenue leakage.
Many operators still record flight hours on paper, snap a photo and email it to the office.
A smudged “3” can look like a “5.” In one recent audit we found a four-per-cent gap between hours billed and hours flown.
FireFlyte shows the exact numbers as soon as the aircraft lands, so the back office closes that gap automatically.
We don’t build trackers; we write software.
Because we accept feeds from any device, customers don’t have to refit their fleets.
Once the data arrives, we infer events – take-off, landing, retardant release – so the screen shows facts, not raw coordinates.
FireFlyte also merges signals from ground vehicles, ADS-B and smartphones running our Beacon app, giving duty officers a single picture of every asset in the air and on the ground.
That breadth means fewer radio calls, faster decisions and better safety margins.
A tracker reports GPS altitude above sea level.
We overlay that on digital terrain and compute height Above Ground Level, which lets chief pilots check standard-operating-procedure compliance.
Finance teams see verified tach-time alongside downtime, so invoices match reality.
Duty officers can replay a sortie in 3D to see exactly where a drop fell and how the pattern looked from the cockpit.
The same data, packaged three different ways, serves three jobs without extra paperwork.
The system is modular.
Operations, Finance, Safety & Risk and Aerial Fire can be switched on independently.
During a free trial we watch where the first payoff appears, then activate that module.
A customer who had a tail-strike last season chose Safety first; another under fuel-budget pressure started with Finance.
Aerial Fire often saves the day when landowners complain – “you scooped from my pond” or “you dropped suppressant on my crop” – because we can prove exactly where the bucket went.
A chief pilot told me, “I can’t sit in every cockpit, but now I don’t need to.” The live 3D feed shows climb rates, circuit shapes and terrain clearance in real time.
If a crew turns inside the approved line, operations sees it instantly and can call a reminder or catch-up debrief.
Over time, agencies track recurrence, refine procedures and improve training with hard numbers instead of anecdote.
Most features start as a sketch on a whiteboard after a customer call.
We build a quick prototype and take it to the next trade show.
If operators lean in, we finish it; if they shrug, we drop it.
Last year we floated an idea in Amsterdam that seemed sensible, but detailed chats showed it wasn’t what crews needed, so it’s shelved.
That cycle keeps the product grounded in real-world tasks.
Aviation has always learned from its records.
What is changing is the speed.
Agencies now expect live engine-cycle counts rather than last month’s averages; finance officers expect true cost per litre by the end of the shift, not the end of the season.
FireFlyte will stay in that loop, turning position data into plain-language answers: did the drop hit the target, how many hours remain on that engine and can we afford the second aircraft today?
Start with a solid data feed.
Many regulators already ask operators to install automatic telemetry units so they can see more than ADS-B.
We often begin by replaying last season using public ADS-B data; once teams see what is possible, the wish-list grows quickly.
From there, deployment is straightforward: because FireFlyte is cloud hosted and hardware-agnostic, the first users are usually online in weeks and full roll-out across an agency takes less than four months.
Good data in, clear decisions out – that is the whole idea.
