Reimagining Luxury Travel: How Blade Elevated Its Digital Experience With Flutter

In just 8 weeks, VGV delivered Blade’s first client-facing mobile app: a fully redesigned, high-performance digital experience using Flutter, architected for speed, luxury, and long-term scalability across platforms.

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The Challenge

Blade, a pioneer in premium air mobility, partnered with Very Good Ventures (VGV) to reimagine and modernize its mobile experience and meet the evolving expectations of today’s elite travelers. While the app had served its purpose for many years, its legacy backend and older web technologies created challenges around scalability, performance, and delivering a smooth user experience.

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From high-frequency airport transfers in Manhattan and the Hamptons, to bespoke charters for global events like the Cannes Film Festival and Monaco Grand Prix, Blade’s clientele expects fast, elegant, and frictionless service—on the ground and in the air.

To match that expectation, Blade needed a digital experience as seamless as its flights to reflect its premium brand, while also ensuring that its internal technology could scale effectively.

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The Solution

VGV took a holistic approach that combined strategy, design, and engineering to deliver a digital experience as seamless and sophisticated as Blade’s flights. Our team focused on building a performant, future-ready foundation using Flutter—enabling unified development across iOS and Android while maintaining the premium design and high-end functionality Blade’s users expect.

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Through close collaboration with Blade’s stakeholders, we defined core experience principles, modernized the app’s architecture, optimized its design system, and implemented a scalable backend integration using Dart Frog. The result is a luxury mobile experience that balances elegance with technical precision and positions Blade for long-term growth and innovation.

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The new Blade app is built around three core experience principles:

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• Get There Sooner: Streamlined booking tools eliminate unnecessary friction, helping fliers get from point A to point B with maximum efficiency.
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• Stress-Free Experience: Intuitive flows and dependable tools simplify coordination, making travel feel effortless.
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• Luxury-Level Services: Every detail in the app reflects the Blade standard, with rich visuals and polished interactions designed for comfort, convenience, and delight.

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How We Did It

To support these principles, VGV introduced a number of key innovations:

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• Backend for Frontend (BFF) Architecture with Dart Frog: Dart Frog was implemented as a Backend for Frontend (BFF) layer to abstract backend complexities. This allowed the mobile app to function smoothly with progressive development by simulating real data before the backend APIs were ready, ultimately giving Blade the flexibility to refine its APIs.
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• Modernizing the Mobile Experience with Flutter: The app was rebuilt using Flutter, providing Blade with a unified codebase that delivers native performance across iOS and Android, enabling a more efficient and consistent multi-platform experience.
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• Design System Optimization: VGV expanded upon Blade’s initial designs to create a robust and scalable design system, refining existing UI components and crafting new ones to support evolving product needs.

The result is a modern, high-end interface that reinforces Blade’s luxury brand while ensuring consistency across every screen. This flexible foundation enables seamless booking, intuitive flight management, and supports long-term growth with a cohesive visual language.

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Growth Strategy in Motion

Beyond app development, VGV collaborated with Blade to shape flexible, agile strategies that evolve with their business needs. Together, we identified dozens of potential ideas and then prioritized the top opportunities based on their business impact and potential lifts.

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Key wins include:

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• A modular design kit (MDK) for personalized, scalable email communication, built to boost engagement and conversion rates while reducing redundant work and driving operational efficiency.
  
  
• A Braze acceleration playbook to unlock more value from Blade’s marketing stack.
  
  
• A prioritized roadmap of future enhancements based on business impact.

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This approach ensured that the initiatives we pursued not only improved customer engagement and operational efficiency, but also aligned effectively with Blade’s growth goals.

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The Result

Blade’s revamped mobile app isn’t just a redesign; it’s a redefinition of what luxury travel looks like in a digital-first world. Today, Blade is equipped with a premium, scalable, and future-ready digital experience that reinforces its position as a leader in the air mobility space.

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• Improved Performance & Stability: A modern architecture supports faster development and smoother user interactions.
  
  
• Elegant and Cohesive Design: The app’s UI reflects Blade’s brand ethos and consistently exceeds customer expectations.
  
  
• Efficient multi-platform development: Using Flutter, Blade now has a cost-effective and scalable mobile solution.
  
  
• Scalable Foundation: Built for growth, the platform enables future integrations, VIP experiences, and global expansion.

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