06Case study · Helicopter charter marketplace
HeliGo Nepal is a marketplace for private helicopter charters to Everest, Annapurna and Mustang, live at heligo.studionepal.com. Travellers send one request and get a fixed quote from a CAAN-certified operator within two hours. I built the traveller site, the operator portal, the admin console and an AI planning assistant.
01The problem
Booking a private helicopter in Nepal usually means phoning operators one by one and comparing prices by hand. Flights to Everest Base Camp, Annapurna, Langtang or Muktinath are sold through phone calls, agents and WhatsApp threads. Travellers cannot compare prices, and operators lose time answering requests that never turn into flights.
Behind every booking is real operational work: picking an aircraft, building a manifest, handling weather disruptions and refunds, and settling money between the platform and each operator.
HeliGo takes one request and returns a fixed quote from a CAAN-certified operator within two hours.
02The solution
Travellers request a charter by destination, date, passengers and trip type, and receive one fixed price. Operators work in a partner portal with their documents and earnings. HeliGo’s staff run dispatch, quotes, bookings and money from an admin console.
A separate AI planning assistant helps travellers who are not sure which flight they want: they describe their days in Nepal, their budget and their group, and it suggests routes before a person takes over. For another travel platform with verified agencies, see HamroYatra.
03Features
A marketplace only works when each side gets what it needs: a clear price for travellers, steady work for operators and real tools for the staff in between.
04Architecture
The public site and every dashboard are one React application talking to an Express API on its own subdomain. Admin, partner and customer areas are separate route groups, and permissions are checked on the server for every request.
The AI planning assistant runs as a separate FastAPI service. Keeping it apart means the booking system keeps working if the AI service is slow or down, and each can be deployed and scaled on its own.
05Engineering
The three decisions that shaped HeliGo Nepal, and why I made them. Each one solves a problem a real user would hit.
01
Every amount is stored as a whole number of paisa. Charter prices, commissions, refunds and settlements are added and split without floating-point rounding, so the operator’s earnings and the platform’s commission always add up to what the traveller paid. Money is where database design matters most.
02
Dispatch, flight manifests, disruptions and settlements are first-class screens in the admin console. A charter moves from request to quote, payment, dispatch and settlement, with a record at each step in the activity log.
03
Each destination has its own indexable page, the sitemap and robots file are generated by a build script, and private areas such as the admin console, accounts and partner documents are blocked from crawling. It is SEO built into the code, not added later.
06Screens
Most travellers plan on a phone, so every page and the quote request work there first.
07Status
HeliGo Nepal is live at heligo.studionepal.com, with destination pages, charter requests and the planning assistant open to the public.
Live
It is a full marketplace: three kinds of users, real money flowing between them, and the operational tools that keep flights running. That is the kind of software I enjoy building most.
Related services
These are the services behind this case study. Each page lists prices, timelines and how I work, and every starting price is on my services page.
Every project, with its stack and status side by side, are in my web development portfolio, and the person behind them is on my about page.
What HeliGo Nepal does, how quotes work and how it was built.
Ask me on WhatsAppHeliGo Nepal is an online marketplace for private helicopter charters in Nepal, to places such as Everest Base Camp, Annapurna Base Camp, Langtang, Gosaikunda, Lukla and Muktinath. A traveller sends one request with the destination, date, passengers and trip type and receives one fixed price from a CAAN-certified operator.
Within two hours. HeliGo’s staff build the quote in the admin console from the request details, and the traveller receives one fixed price for the whole aircraft, instead of phoning operators one by one and comparing prices by hand.
Because floating-point numbers round. HeliGo stores every amount as a whole number of paisa, the smallest unit of the rupee, so charter prices, commissions, refunds and settlements split exactly. The operator’s earnings plus the platform’s commission always equal what the traveller paid.
The public site and every dashboard are one React single-page app built with Vite. It talks to a Node and Express API on its own subdomain, with PostgreSQL and Prisma for data. The AI planning assistant is a separate Python FastAPI service, and everything sits behind Cloudflare.
It helps travellers who are not sure which flight they want. They describe their days in Nepal, their budget and their group, and it suggests routes. When the traveller is ready, the conversation passes to a person. It runs as its own service, so bookings keep working if the AI is slow or down.
Yes. I build marketplaces and booking platforms with traveller, partner and admin areas, payments and the operational screens behind them, as in HeliGo Nepal and HamroYatra. Larger platforms are quoted after a short call, with the scope, timeline and price fixed in writing first. See how I work as a web developer in Nepal.
Send a short note about your project and budget. I reply within one working day with questions or a first estimate.
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