Why bottom-up
Ask anyone at a small airport how the place actually runs and you get the same answer: a whiteboard, a group text, a binder at the FBO, and six apps that do not talk to each other. Every one of them was built for someone else. The front desk. The fleet manager. A power user with a spreadsheet habit.
Almost none were built for the person in the left seat. So that is where we start, and the order of everything below follows from it: each step serves the people the step before brought in.
Give every pilot a logbook they'd choose.
Abeam Pilot Landing iPhone and the web
Nobody at the airport gets connected until the person in the left seat has a reason to be here. So Pilot comes first: a logbook that works with no signal, currency you never have to count, and every step to the certificate you are after.
It has to be good enough to choose, not good enough to be assigned. That means it works on the ramp with no bars, it never asks you to re-enter something it already knows, and your records leave with you the day you want them to.
Put the instructor on the same page.
Abeam Instruct Building with CFIs in the Test Pilot Program
A signature from their own phone is the first handoff, and it already works. The student roster, the endorsements, and the curriculum follow, shaped by the instructors flying the beta now.
Every student has an instructor. Connect the two and the school is half connected before we get there. CFIs in the Test Pilot Program are telling us what is wrong with it, which is the method for every step after this one too.
Connect the school and the club.
Schools and clubs Charted
The schedule, the fleet, and the members, built on the logbooks and the aircraft their pilots already have in Abeam. Nobody re-enters a thing, and nobody is forced onto software their students do not already like.
School software is usually sold to the office and pushed down. We arrive from underneath, with the pilots and instructors already on it, and the office gets the part it actually needs: the schedule, the paperwork, and a fleet that knows its own hours.
Bring in the rest of the airport.
Shops, FBOs, hangars, rentals, owners Charted
The shop, the FBO, the hangar, the rental desk, and the owner of the airplane you fly on Saturdays. What ties them together is the tail number, and the tail number is already in your logbook.
None of these is a new product so much as the other side of a record that already exists. The airplane has hours and a next inspection; the pilot has a logbook that says who flew it. Today those two facts live in different buildings.
Then everyone else who flies.
Beyond the fence Over the horizon charter, corporate, the airlines
The same logbook, a different left seat. A pilot’s records should follow a career from the first solo to the flight deck, and the people who employ them should be on the same page too.
General aviation is where every pilot starts and where most of them keep flying. We earn the right to go further by getting it right here first.
How we get there
We will not get every part of this right on our own, and we are not going to pretend to. The people who fly it decide what ships next, and the loop is short enough that you can see your own note come back as a release.
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Fly it
Test Flight puts the beta on your phone before launch. What you hit on the ramp is what we hear about first.
Test Flight · on the form -
Tell us
Every request lands with the people who build this. No ticket queue, no form letter.
In the app · hello@abeamflight.com -
We ship
Small releases, often, on iPhone and the web. Each one comes with a note on what changed.
What's New -
You hold us to it
The plan stays on this page. When it moves, you will see where and why.
This page
When the plan moves, this page moves with it, and the note says where and why. That is the whole promise: not that the order above is final, but that you will always be able to see it.
How to help
Fly the beta
Tick Test Flight on the form and the beta comes to your phone before launch.
Sign up for Test FlightTell us what is wrong
Every note lands with the people who build this. No ticket queue.
hello@abeamflight.com