Q&A with Aeron online community
In these closing hours of year 2017, Aeron team answers the questions collected from Aeron online community in official Telegram channel (https://t.me/aeronaero):
1) If American Airlines and Cathay Pacific agreed to have a partnership with Aeron, how will the records be maintained securely. I mean will Cathay get access to AA as well?
Under no circumstances we intend to jeopardise the privacy. While log records will be recorded in blockchain, these records can not be viewed by the public, unless so permitted by the record owners. Furthermore, passengers are not interested in raw log data, while summaries make more sense for review and interpretation.
Aeron does not have immediate plans to get involved with major airlines. Existing roadmap is focused on flight schools and general aviation, which is a large industry in itself… we hope to contribute to the quality of flight education and management of the flight schools, where even a basic adoption of an IT system is sometimes a major improvement. Aeron will help to foster an ecosystem in general aviation, which improves the standards of flight education and enables private pilots find clients for flight sharing (where legally permitted), demo and sightseeing flights, facilitates business for ground based operators and aircraft owners.
2) How confident is the team to persuade old traditional giants to buy the product?
Should we establish a firm foothold in general aviation, we will expand further into special operations/charters and eventually into commercial aviation. Though major airlines have the own flight and crew management systems and our product may not be in demand. Aeron target is to bridge the gaps in general aviation, where the gaps have been identified.
3) Do you have a plan to be in more Exchanges? Like Bittrex!
While Aeron (ARN) token is already available on multiple exchanges, including Top5 exchanges like Binance, we are working on more liquidity options for the token holders. There will be more exchanges in the future, however we can’t share advance details till the official listing announcements. Please subscribe to official twitter channel at https://twitter.com/aeron_aero
4) Why use a token?
Aeron (ARN) token is a utility token, which will be used to access Aeron applications for payment of transactional and/or subscriptions fees; in the future it is envisaged that Aeron can become a payment mean in general aviation, including flight booking commissions.
5) Why does a pilot have to manually put in the data?
As in every flight logging application, pilot has to input initial data manually, while certain other details (route and other parameters) can be recorded automatically, in case appropriate permissions to access geolocation are enabled for the application.
6) What if there was a mistake written in the logs?
Once the log is finalised and committed to blockchain, its recorded permanently and can’t be altered. It is envisaged that corrective records can be added, once validated by the system administrator or authority, to highlight any erroneous records (even though the original record will be retained as well).
7) Why would an aviation company want to be fully transparent? (No incentive to be fully transparent only when it’s government imposed)
Aeron is focused on flight schools and general aviation. A flight school has an incentive in transparency, to attract more students and demonstrate the quality of flight education. Same as for private pilots (those with commercial license), transparency brings public trust and drives more business to any private or charter operation.
Imagine a pilot, who lives somewhere in Africa. A picturesque location, perhaps a safari destination. Though he does not have many customers, because of the lack of trust in his true flying experience (or the maintenance history of his aircraft). Here, transparency can make a difference with a real impact. Further, it will drive organic demand for ARN tokens.
8) How will you make money if there’s a 20% discount when using the tokens?
There is no defined 20% discount. With an option to pay with Aeron tokens vs other means, payment in Aeron tokens would be cheaper up to 20%, as Aeron would not have to pay commissions to the payment processor or an intermediary.
9) Who will pay for the 20% off? Who gives that discount?
See answer to question #8 above.
10) If the token gets traded at a high price, what’s stopping the team at AERON from dumping the coins over, lets say a 6 month period? They’ll be no incentive anymore if they can all retire overnight.
11) Has the deal with Bahrain settle? What’s the outcome?
The deals are in the works, with aviation companies and authorities in Bahrain, and other countries in the Middle East. More announcements will follow after the holiday season. Aeron sees major potential in these areas with well-developed private aviation.
As a separate but important development, Aeron would apply with the Central Bank of Bahrain to join the regulatory sandbox program available for start-ups which utilize cryptographic tokens in their business model.