Summary

Jeppesen ForeFlight provides the data, software and insights that power every segment of aviation. Pilots, operators and flight crews trust the company to plan, navigate, monitor and optimize more than 60 million commercial, military, business and general aviation flights each year. Customers span nearly every commercial airline and cargo carrier, business jet fleets of all sizes, fractional, charter and corporate flight departments, helicopter operators, militaries worldwide, and more than 350,000 general aviation pilots and flight schools.

With reliability non-negotiable, the mobile team partnered with Bitrise to build for the future. The journey came in two phases: first, replacing its legacy self-hosted CI with Bitrise to eliminate infrastructure overhead; then, adopting Bitrise Build Hub to standardize on GitHub Actions while running builds on Bitrise's managed Mac infrastructure.

The payoff has gone far beyond eliminating infrastructure maintenance: 30 engineering hours saved each month, 86% faster Xcode updates, and engineers empowered to build the future of aviation software.

Challenge

Phase one: From a Mac closet to mobile-first CI 

Previously, Jeppesen ForeFlight (then called ForeFlight) used JetBrains' TeamCity as its mobile CI while self-hosting its build agents rather than relying on managed infrastructure.

“Essentially we had little more than a closet in our office repurposed as a Mac Mini data center, which clearly wasn’t sustainable.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

The setup created constant friction for the team, leaving them overwhelmed with machine maintenance. Every new Xcode release introduced instability, forcing engineers to drop everything to get CI working again.

“We were constantly troubleshooting issues around changes not appearing in CI in a timely fashion, and we just couldn't figure out why. We worked with TeamCity's support team, but they couldn't solve it either. The mobile focus and expertise just wasn't there, and that was a real problem for us.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

For most mobile teams, unreliable CI is frustrating. For Jeppesen ForeFlight, the stakes are much higher.

“Our failure mode isn't just an annoyed or frustrated user. It could be a pilot missing a weather alert or another safety-critical notification. That’s why release discipline is so important for us.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

Alongside the day-to-day maintenance burden, the team also recognized that its existing CI setup wouldn't support the company's future growth. As the engineering organisation expanded, it needed a platform that could scale with it.

With Bitrise's mobile-first focus, strong reputation, and previous experience within the team, it quickly emerged as the clear choice.

“We were thinking ahead to where we wanted to be in a few years' time, and Bitrise felt like the right move. By the end of this year we'll have about 50 build agents in Bitrise. There's no way our setup before Bitrise would have allowed us to scale as we have today.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

Phase two: Standardizing on GitHub Actions 

After several years using Bitrise CI, the team reached a second inflection point. The wider business began to standardise on GitHub Actions, prompting the mobile team to move in the same direction. 

However, this raised a new challenge: how could they run GitHub Actions on Mac infrastructure that was both reliable and cost effective?

As Nathan explained:

“The GitHub-hosted Mac runners were not a good fit for our use case. We just couldn’t get them to work consistently and, on top of that, cost was also an issue.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

Key requirements:

• Mobile-first CI with expert support
• Managed Mac infrastructure without self-hosting
• Reliable Mac runners for GitHub Actions
• Rapid access to the latest Xcode versions and Apple hardware

“We took a step back to really think about what we needed. We didn't want to change our CI system, but we did want to standardize on GitHub Actions in line with the rest of the company. We also wanted to stop managing infrastructure so we could scale more easily and rely on a platform we could trust.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

Solution

Already relying on Bitrise CI, Jeppesen ForeFlight wanted a way to standardize on GitHub Actions without taking on the burden of managing Mac infrastructure. Build Hub made that possible by combining GitHub Actions with Bitrise's fully managed M4 Pro Mac fleet. 

“When Bitrise Build Hub became available, we wanted to get on it as soon as possible. As more teams across the business adopt GitHub Actions, it's been a huge boon to have that Mac infrastructure already in place. Teams can migrate without having to rely on the more expensive GitHub-hosted runners or self-host and maintain their own infrastructure.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

More importantly, Build Hub gave the engineering team valuable time back. Instead of maintaining infrastructure, engineers could focus on improving the developer platform and tackling higher-impact, domain-specific challenges.

“Previously our focus was always on keeping the lights on and keeping our build agents up to date and consistent. Since moving to Bitrise, and now Build Hub, all of that has gone away. It handles the critical but time-consuming work, which has really unlocked the creativity and potential of our DevOps engineers.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

Having already successfully migrated key jobs from TeamCity to Bitrise CI, the transition to Build Hub was pretty straightforward. 

“It took a few weeks to move everything over and port our jobs to GitHub Actions, but we didn't see any service disruption or performance degradation during the migration or after it.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

The move also simplified the company’s developer experience. Rather than switching between multiple tools, developers could now access build logs directly within GitHub.

Results

For Jeppesen ForeFlight, the biggest outcome wasn't simply moving CI platforms and being able to keep GitHub Actions, it was changing what the engineering team could focus on and the value they could bring to customers.

“When we started using Build Hub, a huge amount of work just disappeared. Suddenly we didn’t have to worry about OS patching, Xcode image management, or hardware lifecycles. Or pray that a job won't hit an old M1 agent. We don’t have to think about any of that anymore. We’ve gone from being infrastructure maintainers to platform level engineers and enablers.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

• 20-30 hours of build time saved every month with Bitrise Build Cache, potentially reducing what the team estimates was a six-figure annual cost in engineering time lost to local build drag.
• New Xcode releases available within 24 hours, up to 86% faster than before, replacing around a week of manual Mac agent updates.
• Xcode beta compatibility testing starts almost immediately, versus one to two months previously to provision a beta Xcode version. 
• Infrastructure-related CI failures have all but disappeared, with ephemeral runners ensuring failed builds now point to genuine code issues while enabling developers to build reliable, purpose-built workflows independently.
• Saved the cost of an additional engineering hire, enabling the team to focus on higher-impact platform improvements instead of infrastructure maintenance. 
• Shared Mac infrastructure now powers GitHub Actions across the wider business, removing the need for other teams to self-host or rely on GitHub-hosted runners.

Overall, Bitrise has enabled the team to shift from persistent firefighting to building the future. As Nathan shared, "essentially we used to be infrastructure maintainers. Now with Bitrise we are able to be platform engineers and focus our time on driving more improvements and value for our customers."

The future

“Adopting Build Hub hasn’t just made our builds faster, it’s fundamentally changed how our team operates. CI is no longer a constraint for us. It's a foundation we can rely on and build the future on. It’s allowed our DevOps team to focus on what actually matters, which is delivering value to both our engineering and pilot community.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

As Jeppesen ForeFlight continues to scale, mobile remains a strategic priority. The team is using Build Hub as the foundation for preparing for iOS 26's major redesign, expanding binary caching, parallelising its build graph, and scaling automated UI testing to reduce manual effort. It's also exploring new approaches such as persona-based testing to support AI-driven development.

“Instead of just keeping machines running, we're building the operating system for how our mobile engineering organisation works, including automated test gates and adapting to AI-driven change. That's where the future is and where we can really make a difference.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}

The partnership with Bitrise is something that the Jeppesen ForeFlight values, and continues to evolve alongside the company’s growth.

“When Bitrise ships a new capability, it feels like another team in our company has built something cool, not like a vendor releasing a new feature. It genuinely feels like we're one team, with Bitrise providing the infrastructure we need to deliver the best possible service to our customers. That's the biggest thing for me.” 
_{Nathan Hillyer, Director of Engineering, Mobile Platform, Jeppesen ForeFlight}