Los Angeles-based time-critical logistics company Flytrix has launched an on-board courier (OBC) service aimed at customers with no logistics background. DocumentJet allows businesses and private customers to book international shipments for urgent documents directly online.
The company, founded in 2023 by German entrepreneur Adrian Kaesberg, says that OBC and hand-carry services have traditionally been used primarily by industries such as aerospace, manufacturing and healthcare, but DocumentJet is designed to make dedicated transport accessible without the quoting process. Customers enter the pickup and delivery locations online and receive a price and estimated delivery window within seconds. The shipment can then be booked directly by credit card.
Flytrix assigns a courier, selects suitable flights and arranges the first- and last-mile transportation and a dedicated courier personally accompanies the document from origin to destination as a passenger.
To keep the process as simple as possible, DocumentJet is limited to documents with no commercial customs value, including contracts, passports, court documents and civil-status records. Shipments involving commercial goods or more complex customs requirements will continue to be handled through regular Flytrix channels.
There are no complicated logistics terms or lengthy account setups and no customer account is required to place a booking. The platform is available in English, German, Spanish, French and Italian. Most shipments are expected to be delivered on the same day or the following day, depending on routing and flight availability.
DocumentJet is currently available for pickups and deliveries across approximately 120 countries.
Kaesberg said the idea for the service grew out of a real-life emergency handled by Flytrix: “A woman in the US called us because her mother was stuck at Zurich Airport after accidentally travelling with an expired passport,” he said. “We had a courier on the way with the correct passport within about an hour. It was one of those cases where a normal courier network simply wasn’t fast enough.”
An automated pricing and feasibility engine combines flight schedules, current courier availability and a matrix built from operational data and experience gathered across thousands of previous Flytrix shipments to calculate pricing and estimated transit times within seconds.
DocumentJet is built on Flytrix’s Ticris platform which it plans to make available to other time-critical logistics providers as a software-as-a-service platform from 2028.
International DocumentJet shipments typically cost between $2,500 and $6,000, depending on distance, flight availability and routing and comfortably arrive one or two days later, and Kaesberg acknowledges that a traditional express carrier will almost always be the more sensible and much cheaper option. He said: “DocumentJet is for the cases where those options are no longer fast or predictable enough.”
