Maya Shpak, CEO of SkyPath, shares her journey from a military helicopter pilot to leading an innovative aviation technology company focused on turbulence reporting. With a unique app likened to "Waze for turbulence," SkyPath empowers pilots by harnessing real-time data to enhance flight safety and comfort. Maya discusses her passion for flying, the thrill of helicopter aviation, and the importance of teamwork in the cockpit. The conversation also highlights the challenges of introducing new technology to the traditional aviation industry, emphasizing the need for collaboration among airlines to share valuable turbulence data. As the episode unfolds, listeners gain insight into the future of aviation technology and how SkyPath aims to serve both commercial and general aviation pilots.

Takeaways:

• Maya Shpak shares her journey from military pilot to CEO of SkyPath, emphasizing her passion for aviation.
• The SkyPath app utilizes crowd-sourced data to help pilots avoid turbulence during flights effectively.
• Maya encourages more women to pursue careers in aviation, highlighting the importance of education and representation.
• The app's technology relies on existing iPad sensors, making it accessible and easy to implement for pilots.
• Maya discusses the challenges of introducing innovative technology to the traditional aviation industry.
• The importance of teamwork in aviation is reinforced, especially during challenging flying conditions.

And I'm Maya Spock.

I am the CEO of SkyPast for the last few years and I'm loving it.

Hey, Maya.

Welcome to the Pilot, the Pilot podcast.

Hey, Justin.

Great to be here tonight.

Yeah.

I'm happy to have you on.

I have one I want to like, Fangirl a little bit, because Fanboy doesn't sound as good, so I'll say Fangirl.

But Skypath has been a really cool app that I have.

And a lot of airline pilots in my former life at NetJets have had the opportunity to use just, I mean, like I said, finger a little bit.

Just how easy it is to use the presentation of the data.

And my favorite part is when I can see if I'm going to spill my coffee or not, because the airline pilots, that's the most important thing, right?

Do I need a top for my coffee?

Should I drink it later?

But I wanted to start off by saying thank you for everything you do for that app, because it's really cool and it's really awesome just to see new technology, enter aviation and what you can do with an iPad and the chips inside is crazy and something that we never thought we'd have, so.

Well, we'll dig deeper into skypath in a little bit.

I want to start with you.

I want to start with Maya in aviation and kind of talk about why you even got interested in aviation, how you ended up where you are now, and kind of start from the beginning about initial love of flying and aviation.

Perfect.

I think it's a great start.

So, you know, Justine, I've started my aviation career as.

I wouldn't say teenager, but, you know, I'm living in Israel.

In Israel, where, you know, all of us are going to the.

To the army, some of us are going to infantry, some of us to the air Force.

And as a child, as a grownup, you know, I was really interested on what you may call military flying.

You know, most of my friends were going to do some tests for becoming a military pilot, and I decided to try and nominate myself to the flight academy.

Here I was.

I didn't have a lot of knowledge about aviation back then.

No one from my, you know, from my family.

It wasn't family things.

No, no.

One of my acquaintance was a pilot.

But, you know, it basically something that, you know, I had some attracted attraction to it, or I was attracted to it since I was young, you know, was drafted to the Air force, was basically went through the flight academy, which I'm currently flying there as an instructor, finished the Flight academy as a helicopter combat helicopter pilot.

And I think, you know, that I'm emotionally invested in aviation since that point, more or less.

That is one of my favorite things, flying.

Yeah, it never stopped, stopped exciting me like every time it's like the first time.

This is something I'm trying to teach my students, you know, to actually enjoy and love flying.

Even when it's tough and challenging, you know, really to open the eyes and enjoy it.

So, you know, and I have the privilege to do it even now like 20 something years after that.

So that's awesome.

You know, as we had a previous conversation a couple weeks ago and you mentioned something that you love helicopters.

You are a helicopter girl girl and you love helicopters so much.

Have you.

Do you have an experience in fixed wing versus helicopters or is most of your time just in helicopters?

So I have to say that most of the my time is helicopters.

You know, this is my proficiency.

This is what I know.

You know, this is not what I know best.

I did, I, I do have, you know, some or a few flight hours on fixed wings mostly, you know, basically just regular GA planes like 172 or stuff like this.

Mostly for fun, which is, you know, it's fun but you know, that's, I would say that's not more than a few, few dozens of hours.

Not, you know, I have thousands of flight hours in helicopters.

So, you know, it's not comparable at all.

And it's not the same.

Some of it are similar, you know, some of it is different, but yeah, most of it is.

Helicopter flying.

Yeah.

What do you love about helicopter flying?

I think that the best thing in it in my own perspective is the ability, and this is something that is common to GA as well.

You know, the ability to really enjoy seeing the landscape, feeling close to earth, you know, the ability to fly low and really connect with, you know, the scenery and, you know, and all of that.

And this is something that is common to GA as well because most of, again, in my experience, most of G flight is VFR anyway.

So, you know, it's very, very different from commercial flying and IFR flying.

So, you know, in that sense it's similar.

I love the fact that you can basically land anywhere.

You know, it's kind of a, you know, it's kind of a hike that you're doing.

This is also something that it's true, you know, this is also something that is neat.

So if you want to land and open a bottle of, I don't know, coffee or tea or anything like that, that could happen.

Which is also really nice, you know, taking all of this experience into a road trip or something that you can, you know, actually divide into pieces.

It's not about, you know, having the necessity to depart and land in an airfield, you know, which frames the entire experience or an airfield at the end.

So this is also something that is differing from fixed wing, I guess.

I think this is the most of it, you know, and also.

But this is also something that is quite common.

It's different from maybe, you know, what I'm remembering from combat flying, but, you know, the fact that it's a team, you know, you're doing it together.

But that's also, you know, in commercial flying.

And I really love the fact, you know, that you are at least two people.

In my own experience, by the way, I know that helicopter flying in the States is some sometimes or in a way, commercial helicopter flying, sometimes a single pilot operation, but mostly where I fly as a team of two, which is also something that is really nice.

And I really love working as a team.

So this is also something that I think is representing my emotions around that, definitely.

And it's nice to work as a team.

I've flown single pilot, IFR and some.

And a Pilatus PC12, a Cessna Caravan flying freight around.

It's a heavy workload, so it's nice to have it divvy up.

And it's nice to count on someone that, you know, is qualified and trained and.

And can be a second set of eyes.

Because I'm sure even in a helicopter, it's like that power.

Power line's kind of close.

Like, oh, yeah, those are kind of close.

All right, let's.

Let's stop the center.

Just.

Yeah, you just have someone else to help you out, which is awesome for me in helicopters.

I've never been in a helicopter.

I'm sure once I got in, I would like it, but to me, they just don't make sense.

Obviously, I'm used to having a propeller on the front, engines that propel you forward.

And I know you can kind of go forward in helicopter, too.

But the whole hovering.

I think if I was just hovering in a helicopter, I would feel really uncomfortable because I'm like, how are we staying here?

You know, that reminds me of a story.

We'll go back to it maybe later.

But the founders of Skypas, the founders of the company that I'm managing, three, let's say, well, experienced pilot, combat planes pilots, commercial pilots.

That was where the idea for Skypers was born.

So it's basically Pilots initiating the entire concept.

But the reason I'm mentioning that right now is that when initially when they recruited me, my initial position was the company coo.

And when they recorded me, they had a joke where they were saying, well, we were looking for someone with the understanding of management and commercial flying and in general in aviation.

And we were also, the preference was that he or she will be a pilot.

So we didn't made it in your case.

And they were joking about the fact that helicopter flying didn't make sense to them.

So, you know, helicopter pilots are not actual pilots because this thing, you know, is not meant for flying.

But, you know, that's, you know.

Well, again, you know, taking it back to the fact that it doesn't make sense.

But you know, when you look at, when you think about the physics of it, it actually in my mind makes more sense than fixed wing because you, you know, you basically, you basically control your own lift and drag.

You know, you have the ability to actually control it.

No, you know, with no correlation to, I don't know, to speed or, you know, those constraints that you have on a fixed wing.

And it's, you know, it's the same concept, you know, of creating lift on a wing, you know, but as a standalone.

So, you know, that is the, maybe in a very, very high level, the story of helicopters, you know, you know, trying to simplify it to our listeners audience.

But that's the, you know, that is how I teach that and how I see that.

You know, when another thing that kind of.

When I was flying my previous company, I remember I was flying somewhere randomly in the United States and there's a helicopter doing pat work.

And all of a sudden I look out on the corner of my eye and I just see it like dropping from the sky.

And I was the guy, I was like, oh my gosh, they're doing auto rotations.

I was like, that looks terrifying from the outside.

What's it like, what's it like inside a helicopter when you're preparing for auto rotations, preparing for simulated engine failures?

I'm guessing as an instructor it's got to be quite fun.

But I'm also guessing your first time in a helicopter, it's got to be quite nerve wracking to try to manage that energy.

That is correct.

Again, it's, it really depends if you're flying a single engine or dual engine helicopter.

But let's assume that you know, your train and most of the training helicopters are single engine.

You know, even in commercial aviation, you'll train on an R44 or an R22, which is single engine, or, you know, if you're going for the, for the largest helicopters again as a student, you probably will go to one of the bell 505 or 4.

So those are all single engine helicopters.

So you have to master your way in auto rotation and you know, and as you say, it's an acquired capability and also, you know, the inner feeling around that is becoming more, less and less scary.

But I have to tell you that first time someone actually, you know, closed the throttle and demonstrated, demonstrated an actual authoritation with, you know, where CD the engine needles goes down and you hear the horn, that's terrifying, I have to be honest.

But when you understand, you know, to take it to the more of a professional, and this is how we teach that.

When you understand that, you know, if you, if you understand what you need to deal with the potential and the energy, the helicopter is flying, you know, it's flying, you can fly it till the ground.

You just need to understand, you know, where you maintain your energy and what kind of maneuvers will kill the energy.

And in that case you're in a problem, you know.

So the way we teach that is that we don't actually close the throttle all the way, you know, we basically, you know, close it to the point where the engine can recover if you do the procedure in a way that is basically wasting the energy and you don't have any energy to finish the procedure.

This is, you know, this is more or less how you train with it, but it's.

For helicopter pilots, it's a common training, you know, it's like, yeah, it's like training in landing, you know.

How many, how many landing did you do?

Thousand.

Million.

Exactly.

So many.

Exactly.

So, you know, in helicopter, I probably did a million auto rotations, you know.

Yeah, that's, that's part of their routine.

You know.

What personally was something that was hard for you in helicopter flying?

Was there anything you struggled with particularly?

Was it just a lot of fun and you just kind of put your head down and worked as hard as you could?

Kind of talk about anything that you struggled with or there are things that you even liked about the training?

It's funny because I think, I think that, you know, the, when you're a student, it doesn't matter if you're trained as a soldier or as a civilian.

I think that whenever you train also in a fixed wing, you don't have a lot of bandwidth to enjoy the process.

You're so much invested in the process and it's so much challenging.

Everything seems so challenging.

Whereas now when I have more perspective, I'm saying it wasn't that bad.

It was just, you know, stressful and challenging and there was so much things you had to learn, you know, the theoretical part and the technical part and the flying part.

I don't know if I really enjoyed.

Enjoyed that back then.

Now I enjoy every minute of it, you know, even the, you know, even the, let's say, the more complex or difficult parts of training, which you always need to train about.

You know, you're never too good to train, in my opinion.

You know, it's.

You're never too experienced to actually, you know, train your skills and maintain your skills and maintain your professional ability to fly this thing.

It doesn't matter if it's a helicopter or a fixed wing.

I really believe that it's a profession, you know, it's not something that you're doing, you know, on the way.

You know, if you want to be able to fly a bird of any kind, you need to be able to understand that that's going to be something that is part of your, I would say, normal routine because you have to maintain your, your skills and your edge, you know, in your knowledge.

So in that sense, now I enjoy it very, very much.

And to your, to your question, Justin, I think that the most challenging thing I had to do was formation flying at night, which is really challenging, you know.

Yeah, I think, you know, if you look at the tip of, you know, the tip of the, let's say the tip of the, the things that they had to do would be formation at night.

You know, we're using night flying goggles in order to do that.

That was, of course, you know, part of my military training and not my commercial flying, though I missed that.

I wouldn't mind flying information in commercial flying, but that was really something.

Although, you know, again, in a certain point, after extensive training, you know, that becomes part of your standard routine like flying weather or whatever pilot needs to be qualified to flying something.

You know, that was the normal routine, but yeah.

So flying helicopters for you, Is it strictly military?

Was there some commercial flying you did as well or kind of.

Where is the experience post military or what you're doing right now?

So, you know, I, when I departed from the military probably 13 or 14 years ago, I still, I kept.

And I'm still flying in reserves, as I told you.

I'm teaching the flight academy, but that's the Air Force flight academy.

As a reserve pilot, this is something that we do most of us, you know, part of our reserve service.

And I do fly, you know, from time to time, but just as a hobby, you know, just on weekends.

Not something, not commercial flying.

When I left the Air Force I went more for the, you know, I would say the OEM parts of aviation.

I started with a company that manufactures mostly head up displays, enhanced vision systems, you know, things that support SCAD3 lending very, very innovative and visionary stuff, which I believe very much.

And there's, you know, there's doing they providing a lot of added value to commercial flying in terms of what it, you know, what it enables the pilots to do.

Technology.

So this is what I did for a few years and I kept flying, you know, in reserves and on weekends.

Not something very, very specific and that happens, you know, before I proceed to Skypath.

But no, I'm not dealing with it, you know, as something that is more routine commercial flying.

As a pilot anyway.

Is there like a dream helicopter that you'd like to buy?

You know, one that you could have personally fly around or is that in the hopes and dreams of kind of Maya, either now or in a couple years?

So I would say, I would say that it wasn't when I finished flight academy, it wasn't that common.

It wasn't that common that female pilots finished their flight academy year in where I live.

And in my specific class we were, there were two of us, two out of, I don't know, 52 female helicopter pilots, which is really rare.

You know, two female helicopter pilots will finish the academy in the same class.

We're still in great relationship and we had, I guess we have dreams since we were 20 to have a Jet Ranger.

You know, it's not something very.

Yeah, just a Jet Ranger, that's all.

Yeah.

Without doors.

Because it's like a cabaret Jet Ranger.

There is a model like that flying around here, just having fun.

So probably my first private helicopter is going to be a Jet Ranger.

That's the plan.

That's awesome.

I can't wait to see it happen.

That'd be awesome.

Yeah, I'll call you, Justin.

I'll call you and invite you to fly with me.

Let's do it.

That'd be my first helicopter ride.

That would be amazing.

You kind of touched on it a little bit.

Talking about just women in aviation.

I don't remember the exact percentage, but in the United States I think it's something as low as 6% or 8% of all pilots are females.

What can we do to get more girls in aviation?

Because it's not A guy's job, right?

Anyone can do this job, anyone can be trained to do this, fly airplanes, do it confidently, make tough decisions.

What can we do more?

I think Instagram, I think social media has really helped to just show that girls do this as well and having younger girls look up to them.

But what else can we do?

I think the magic lies with educate, educate, educate, educate from a young age.

It's not necessarily flying.

It's so many things in our society, you know, basically demonstrate whoever is listening that, you know, there's no, well, there is a limit.

But you know, most of the things we're doing are not limited to one gender specifically, you know, and it's a social thing.

We need to educate the generation that, you know, at least women can dare dreaming or can they doing stuff that, you know, in a way they may not believe they're able to do and at least try, you know.

So whenever someone is asking me, Justin, and of course you're not the first one that popped this question, I always say, you know, because that's something that goes with me since, you know that there been 20 years, more than 20 years since I finished flight academy.

We were the first helicopter female pilots here where I live, that was a thing.

And we always, you know, I'm saying you need to educate women that they can there doing whatever they like and if they'll be consistent and if they'll be determined and if they'll be good.

Because you need to be good.

It doesn't matter if you're a boy or girl, they will make it, you know.

Yeah, that's my, at least that's my message.

I agree, I totally agree.

So I can't say it better myself.

Thank you.

Let's get a little bit into kind of skypath and how you got to Skypath.

You mentioned that you got involved with OEMs, heads up displays, some other cool stuff with manufacturers.

Was Skypath more of a headhunting thing?

Was it something that you saw somewhere, friends and were just like, oh, that's kind of cool.

I like the idea of a startup, so talk a little bit about that.

It wasn't very specific, but I was, you know, looking for something that is not that corporate, not that huge way to make more impact on the overall process and not necessarily on the limited scope of work that I am doing.

I'm sure That I don't know if you can relate to it, but in the United States is also in the aviation industry, huge OEMs.

And sometimes it's very difficult to really influence a process or a vertical or something that you want to promote because those are huge companies.

So I was looking for something in the industry that is, I can do more in it.

And that was really the early days of Skypas.

Skypas was founded, as I mentioned.

Skypas was born as an idea in the mind of an airline commercial pilot captain and line check airman that was seeking for a solution to the turbulence problem.

And while he was looking at the charts in the iPad, you know, basically trying to figure out if the, it was a real time issue, you know, the turbulence that he's encountering is actually in the chart somewhere.

You know, he had kind of, kind of an idea that if he's looking at the iPad to figure out how to deal with the problem, he may be able to use that to create a solution for the problem.

And it was really early days, you know, and they were looking.

But he was an airline pilot, you know, he had a work.

He couldn't be completely devoted to founding this or pursuing this idea.

And all of the founders of this company had what we call a day job, or most of them at least.

So they were looking for help to take this idea to the next level, to actually mature the product.

And they were seeking for someone with an aviation background, as I told you, that knows his way in aviation and management, but is also a pilot.

May I remind you that.

And yeah, yeah, this, this specific joke is, will go with us probably a long time in the company.

And they found me and they, they asked me to come for an interview and I, as, as an aviator fan, you know, I listened to the idea which was really, really the baseline of what you're doing now.

Not even the baseline.

And I told them, listen, I think it's wow, I think it's brilliant.

It's a brilliant idea.

You know, it's basically.

And again, I don't know if the audience is familiar with what we're doing, may want to maybe elaborate about that a bit, but it's like waze for turbulence.

You know, that was my initial thought about that and I thought that if it's going to work, it would be amazing harnessing the part of the, of the crowd, the two pilots, everything that's flying an airplane with an iPad to create a global map of clear turbulence.

Most clear turbulence.

Not necessarily.

It's, you know, it's something Else and I joined them.

And all the rest, as we say, is history.

I guess when we, When I, when the airline pilots, when we look at Skypath and see, you know, the beautiful app that it is today, the information's presented really clearly.

What.

How many iterations has it taken to get to where we are today?

Because obviously we see the final product.

We don't see kind of A, B, C, D, E.

You know, what was.

What's the differences, I guess, between what you started out with when you got hired versus where we are now?

I would say, you know, a bicycle and a Porsche.

Wow.

Wow.

I'm sure that if I would show you the early stage, you won't even recognize or say, okay, that's Skypas app.

No, we started with an mvp.

We've hired someone to basically just put things on an app.

And we gave.

The way we created Skype as algorithm is that we utilized all of our pilot friends to fly with this MVP and write on a note whenever they encounter turbulence what the.

What their presumed intensity of or the severity of the turbulence.

And we started to measure and compare notes and you know, the accelerometer signals that we got from the app, that was the early beginning.

You know, we tried to put our hand on how we can determine that something is actually turbulence.

And that cost us or.

But it took us probably thousands of fly hours and three years of development to get the algorithm right.

From that point, although we are continuously improving it and using all the data that we have to continue and refine it and tweak it, there's a lot of.

We normalize the turbulence intensity per aircraft type.

So whenever we have a new model, a new aircraft type.

Joining the Energet, by the way, was really a challenge because, you know, most of our customers are airlines, airlines flying, you know, they have a range of aircraft, but, you know, most of them are pretty, pretty obvious.

You know, the 320s, the 703, the 777, 7 8, you know, more or less that trains the ATR, the Embryers, but that's more of it.

You know, more or less the types.

And then NetJet joined in and, you know, there was a diversity of airplane types and sizes and wingspans.

And, you know, we did a lot of work which was very good for us to refine what we are doing for each and every aircraft type.

But it also gave us, gave us a lot of confidence and experience on the process, on our approach to doing so.

So now to add another aircraft type to the system is much easier for us.

Because we understand more or less what needs to be done in order to do it right.

But the app is.

It's something else.

And by the way, I want to tell you that it's also changing as we speak.

We have a new version coming out next month, which also.

Oh, cool.

I'm not sure you're going to recognize it completely after we launch this version also.

That's awesome.

I'm looking forward to it.

One thing I think is really cool, and this kind of relates to anyone starting something, right?

Like, skypath was just an idea, right?

It was just some pilots that had an idea.

Just like any pilot can have an idea, but the idea has an action, and the action is trying to figure out how to do it.

And in this case, they just went to their buddies and essentially were like, hey, let's mark down what your turbines actually was.

And then we'll kind of record the oscillations that we have.

I think you said mpv.

Is that what you said you used?

And then we'll compare it, and then you get the data which creates the algorithm.

And obviously, you need some really smart people.

Most pilots don't have the ability to do that, right?

I mean, maybe they did, but me, I'd be like, oh, there's data.

Okay, cool.

Same year.

But you get really smart people to kind of analyze it.

Be like, all right, well, we see trends based on what we're comparing, and we feel confident to label this as light, moderate, severe, whatever it may be, and create.

And create an algorithm for that, which is amazing, but it's just cool that it all started as just an idea between pilots and ones that happen in cockpits all the time.

You're like, you know, this would be really cool.

And it's like, all right, well, just try and do it, you know, figure it out.

So I think that's really cool that they're able to just come up with an idea and actually make it happen, because that doesn't happen very often.

I agree.

The courage to take an idea, you know, and actually take action, you know, execute it.

It's really awesome.

You know, I really appreciate it.

And, you know, I.

You're saying about, you know, people having an idea and doing this smart thing, and it made me think, you know, at the end, I think that my.

Our most precious assets in the company are the team, the people that are building the product, the people that are running the algorithms, the people that improving the model.

And, you know, those guys in skypath are, you know, they're literally an A team.

You know, they're doing marvelous work in customer support and trying to fulfill all the new ideas that we have or customers have sometimes.

And that's, I think that's our huge asset.

The people that are in the background and they're great.

What's been the most difficult part about helping build this company and getting it started and getting it rolling?

I think it's still a bit difficult.

I think that, you know, although I've been with this aviation industry for some time now, at the end, and I'm saying it as part of this industry, this industry is extreme.

I would say, I wouldn't say maybe traditional, but, you know, it's really difficult to present new ideas, you know, to the aviation industry, innovative ideas.

And we get, you know, we get why safety is number one priority of, you know, of this industry.

And everything that is presented, you know, needs to take consideration on how it's going to affect safety.

We can do anything, you know, we're trying to enhance safety, but you know, on the other hand, we can't embrace anything that for some reason would, you know, harm the delicate balance of maintaining safety in the century.

So the most difficult thing I think in the beginning was basically educating the industry or presenting the industry the concept of learning about turbulence from an iPad device, you know, a commercial off the shelf iPad device, and also to make them share, although, you know, anonymously make them share their data.

You know, because when we start, when we initiated the idea of crowdsourcing, you know, of sharing observation between airlines as one that works in an airline, you probably know that the data of an airline is something that needs to be kept within the airline.

And we came with an idea and we say, but you have valuable data that can help other airlines and other airlines has valuable data that can help you.

So if we'll all share the, what we call Skype as observations, the reporting of the iPad, and you're gonna be an aircraft that is following another airline's aircraft.

You're going to get value from their reporting and vice versa.

I think that when we pass this point, and again, Justin, just to be very, very clear, everything is anonymous.

There's nothing that implies on who's flying the aircraft or anything like this.

It's basically general information that is common in flight.

Rather 24 plus turbulence report, which is, you know, related to a specific geolocation most of the time, because we aggregate those reports that could be a turbulence report that is made out of 6, 7, 10, 30 different aircraft that is aggregated into a single tiling time tiling space and time.

And no one knows what exactly is the aircraft that reported that because, you know, it's a specific geolocation.

So when we passed that point where we.

I wouldn't say convinced, but when we got to the point that the airline embraced the fact that if they share information, they'll also get information, you know.

So if you're flying to.

I don't know if you're flying, for example, to Thailand, and, you know, Thailand is covered with reports that are made by a Thai airline, and you have a lot of information on the way to Thailand and on the.

Around the water bodies around Thailand.

So you can gain from their information.

And when a Thai airline is coming to the US they can gain from your domestic flights and from your information.

That was the idea, and I think that was the most difficult part.

When it passed this point, it became much easier to implement the idea and the concept.

Yeah, aviation.

I mean, the way you explained it in the beginning, aviation seems like a pretty hard industry to break into as a newcomer, Especially when there's such big traditional names that have, whether it's EFBs, whether it's just contracts with airlines, relationships, just starting as a new company, starting as a new brand, and presenting a new idea can probably be pretty intimidating.

And I'm sure airlines are like, oh, we already work with someone.

But then they're like, no, no, wait, wait, wait.

See what we're doing?

See what we're doing?

It's different.

This is something you don't have.

Turbulence is bad.

We can help you avoid it.

And they're like, oh.

Oh, wow, that looks cool.

Yeah.

Okay, this makes sense.

So I'm guessing just convincing that first airline to say yes, which was probably just amazing when they finally said yes, or multiple airlines, was definitely had to be pretty, pretty difficult.

But you guys, it seems like to me almost everyone uses it in the airline world, including NetJets and then as well.

So you've done a great job at convincing them and showing them that your product is worth using.

Yeah, I would say that most of the US Major carriers are using that, which is great because, you know, for the smaller ones that they're using that, you know, they have a very good starting point on initial coverage, you know, so if you look at United, which were our first customer, for example, they were the first one.

They were highly.

Yes, they were highly invested in.

In turbulence integration, you know, and I think that they found what we're doing as innovative.

They were always early on embracing innovative technology, you know, and given some room to Those kind of concepts.

So they were really a great launch customer, and they helped us perfect what we were doing, you know, within time.

So a lot of what you've seen now inside the application are actually requests that were made by the pilot we enable.

I don't know if you've seen that, but we enable direct feedback from the app to our product team.

And every feedback is registered as a ticket, which someone in the product team is looking at, and figure out whether it's a good idea and if it's a good idea.

Sometimes we implement that as part of our next version.

So many things.

Many improvements that you see on the app right now are, of course, also suggested by other customers, but the initial progress was made by the extensive support and backing from United, which was amazing.

What exactly is it using in the iPad to help with the algorithm?

Is it an accelerometer?

Is it a chip?

What is it registering to match with the algorithm inside the iPad itself?

So the technology relies on the accelerometers that resides in the iPad itself.

I think that what is actually patented, what actually counts as algorithm, is our ability to actually differentiate between what is essentially turbulence and what is a tapping or shaking or dropping the iPad, you know, or writing an email.

It's not only, you know, we're not only looking at the independent iPad.

So if we have two iPads in the airplane, we will compare those, you know, on the server level, and we'll figure out if they're reporting the same.

And if not, you know, there's a way that the algorithm states what would be, you know, what would be the correct report, let's say.

So we mesh those reports.

We filter out noise or some, but at the end, we're using whatever is provided within the iPad.

And I think that is, you know, what is so exciting in this technology, because you are not required to install anything on the mainframe.

You're not required to buy any additional hardware and install and integrate any additional hardware.

And you have the ability, if you're looking at mass scale, I'm not.

You know, we also have Microfleet and single and private aviators that are using the service.

But if you're looking at mass scale, you have the ability to deploy technology with the entire fleet within a day.

You know, and that is something that was never done within this industry.

I've never seen technology that were implemented within a day on an entire fleet.

You know, and this is one of the advantages, that it doesn't require any additional effort from the customer.

You know, there's of Course, there's always effort, there's training and you know, there's paperwork.

But I'm saying if you're looking from a installation and maintenance perspective, that's really easy for the customer and that's really nice.

You know, maybe the tour I've been taking from this head up displays and this complicated Design Insurance Level 8 technology which I was dealing with, which was challenging in terms of installation and implementation to what we are doing right now.

So also appreciate the difference between those two technologies resides on the same aircraft.

Yeah.

When was it realized that an iPad had that capability?

Was it always kind of like a hope that the iPad would be able to do it?

Was it kind of right when the idea was born?

I know you mentioned using different equipment for it, but when did the iPad kind of come in with it?

Was it a certain year, generation or did it always have the capability?

I would say I'm not sure.

We had a clue.

You know, it was a journey.

For now we're completely confident in that.

And also we're generating machine learning prediction or AI predictions of turbulence based on the data that we take out of the iPads, which is the next level of what we're doing because we complement observations with forecasting that is made not in a physical or not in a completely physical meteorological way, but is done with machine learning technologies that we embraced in the last few years.

But at the beginning we had a lot of doubts and I think that only, you know, you hope it's going to do whatever you expected it to do and whatever the test and the statistics and the trials that you took, you know, you hope the technology will prove that it's working.

I think in a certain point when we started flying with United, which was our launch customer, we already understood that the technology is working, but it still took us some time to refine the algorithm in terms of severity.

You know, we knew it's recognizing turbulence in a good manner.

We knew that we are close by to the severity.

But the normalization paragraph type and really putting the finger on the right intensity of turbo lens because we need more data, we needed more data to validate what we are doing.

So it was a year after we started and we basically had a shutdown of the entire industry, which was also a journey.

It was also challenging, you know, continue doing and maintaining this operation and developing the product when nobody is flying.

So basically you can test your assumptions as you were saying, if it works or not.

But it's a good product.

There are some, a few smart people behind it that did great job.

It takes a whole village.

Yeah, it takes a lot of people to put together an awesome product.

Yeah, true.

It's cool.

Like I'm guessing with United it was more or less you guys reaching out to them and I'm guessing now you're having airlines reach out to you, which has to be kind of a different feeling, right?

Like it's got to feel better.

Like, oh wow, this is cool.

We got like a backlog of airlines are trying to upload and unload.

Just the differences in that.

And a young company, right.

Like it's pretty cool to see how quick it's been implemented, how the idea has kind of taken fruition and where it is now.

And I think it'd be really cool if you guys could ever show off like the differences of what the version look like and just show how much strides have been done and what is going to come.

As you said, there's going to be another launch here soon, so I look forward to seeing that one as well.

I got a couple more questions.

One, I mean you can kind of, this is about a few, like future Skypath, so you don't have to give away everything.

But there's a lot of pilots that don't ever make it to the airlines.

There's a lot of pilots that don't make it to corporate, that make it to fractional, where turbulence is a big deal.

There's a lot of pilots that are married to husbands or wives that don't like turbulence and don't want to fly in small planes because of turbulence.

And I could see a place where this could be very valuable to smaller airplanes.

172s, SR22s bonanzas.

I mean any plane lower than a private jet or even all the private jets.

Right.

So is the future going to focus on GA as well?

Is it going to be more airline tailored?

Do you guys have a plan for that or anything?

So currently most of what you're doing is.

And then I'm saying most of it, most of what you're doing is around BA and commercial flying because we have a lot of data in those altitudes to support the users.

You know, whether it's observational or predicted, there's really good coverage to support that on the lower altitudes for GA mostly and V4 offline mostly.

Not necessarily.

I would say that we still have the technology supported because we have the prediction capability that is tailored to what we're doing and there is an ability, I think that there is an ability to access and acquire the service for our website.

I'm not saying I'm thinking.

I know most of the single operators that are flying with us, you know that they did their own onboarding, they went to the website, you know, they decided what kind of package they're tailoring and then they're using the application.

I think that GA most definitely can value what we're doing because again when you are flying something that is a bit more light and smaller, sometimes the impact, it's much more severe.

I think that since again we are a young company, as you mentioned, we just didn't have the bandwidth to educate the GA industry and to reach out to all of those pilots and to explain to them what kind of benefits our service is bringing.

I wish we had more bandwidth to do that and we can harness the GA industry to use it as well because at the end we are trying to enhance safety.

This is the service, this is what we're trying to do.

So yes to your question.

Yeah, I believe that Skypers can leverage those pilots.

Of course, as someone who's listening to this and is like oh wow, I had no idea this was an option.

I had no idea that I could do this.

Whether they're flying a bonanza or their own jet, where could they go?

You mentioned your website is their app store.

Kind of talk them through how to download, how to get what they need to do in order to have this capability.

So the easiest way would be to type in SkypasIO and reach out to the website and basically learn on what we're doing from the app set.

It's really user friendly.

There's videos and all the packages and a simple self onboarding.

After someone decides, I didn't mention, but there's also a free trial for months so someone can start using the service for a month.

Then basically the site doesn't want to use it or it doesn't see the value in it and basically drop it, drop out.

So it's not, you know, long lasting commitment.

We really believe in the value we're bringing.

So we enable everybody to basically try it before they acquire the service.

After he gained the, you know, after he's basically doing the self onboarding, the application is available in the app store, Basically type in SkyPath, download it from the App Store and in order to get a user and a password, you know, he needs to do the self onboarding in the SkyPass IO website.

But the app is in the App Store.

So just, you know, downloading it and that's it.

It's, you know, kind, I don't know, simple as.

Yeah, Spotify, I guess.

I love it.

The same idea.

Spotify is crazy easy to use.

So it's a good way to put it.

Right.

Good example.

You're saying.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Well, Maya, that's really all I have for you.

If there's anything I missed you want to touch on, we can talk about that as well.

But as I said earlier, skypath has been great.

One thing that I mentioned before is just how easy it is to use.

I mean, I hardly ever need to type in my airline my flight number.

It's like, hey, are you on this?

And it's like, yeah, that is me.

You click ok, then your route's uploaded.

It tells you if it's going to be a comm 4 flight, moderate turbulence, are you going to spill your coffee or a rough ride.

And then just having that data to help make decisions.

Right.

It's another tool that pilots can use to help make the flight as smooth and as good and as fast as possible.

So kudos to your team, kudos to you, kudos to the people that had the idea.

It's great to talk to you and share this idea because I know as we talked about a couple weeks ago, it's just some people don't even know about the app.

So just getting it out there, away from just the airlines and netjets and fractional and opening up to everyone that this is an option, I think it's going to be really cool to see how it can be used and I can't wait to see future iterations and to see what's next.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate you invited me.

I really enjoyed our conversation.

You know, that was really eye opening.

Yeah, a lot of fun and I really appreciate your time.

I hope you have a great day.

Thank you.