Part 01. Blockchain in aviation — what is General aviation, what is special about it and how is it different from commercial aviation

We are beginning the series of articles as announced last February, with this publication. It will allow our supporters (including our future partners) to better understand the reason why we are working in this particular sphere of activity and why it is interesting to highlight it through both a business prism and through the point of view for pressing issues, which need solution in our rapidly developing world.

As we have mentioned in our announcement to this article, we were the first who tried to apply the modern blockchain technology in the sphere of aviation.

In early 2017, nobody would have believed in it and nobody would have understood the prospects of this direction. However, nowadays, as you could learn from our publications on Twitter and other channels, we can speak of “blockchain in aviation” as a separate young and highly promising approach.

The goal of this article is to explain specific features of our aviation business. In particular, we’d like to focus on the similarities and differences between the General aviation and the Commercial aviation.

Surely most of you have travelled by air. Business trips or holidays reasons, in our modern world it is quite difficult or almost impossible to do this without getting a commercial flight. In one way speaking, just using scheduled commercial airlines.

Of course you surely have travelled on scheduled airlines by Airbus or Boeing aircraft.

However, apart from the flights by aircraft of major carriers, there is also general aviation which is performing different kinds of activities: from sightseeing flights with small airplanes or helicopters to opportunities for renting an aircraft — from the smallest two-seaters to the larger models (the latter ones being more cost efficient). Offers of this type can be found on https://aerotrips.com.

There are regions where this type of aviation is in high demand. For example, Alaska, or northern Canada. On one hand, it helps people to get to the places that can’t be accessed by other types of transportation, but, on the other hand, some natural phenomena, such as Nazca geoglyphs in Peru can be duly appreciated only from a bird’s eye view. The use of general aviation for the touristic purposes will be reviewed in other following article.

Apart from anything else, there are a lot of general aviation enthusiasts, owners of small aircraft, people who fulfilled their dreams of flying by obtaining private pilot licenses, those, for whom these flights are a sort of a hobby or entertainment.

As you may see, the general aviation is in high demand.

As of today, the market of general aviation is evaluated at over $200 billion. Over 85% of flights account for the US and Europe. At the moment, over half a million people are holders of the private pilot licenses issued by the FAA. like you can see, these figures are rather impressive [source: https://gama.aero/wp-content/uploads/2016-GAMA-Databook_forWeb.pdf

General aviation covers a wide range of activities, both commercial and non-commercial ones. In recent years, a new direction in general aviation — the so-called flight sharing — has been rapidly developing. Basically, a flight sharing is a non-commercial air trip where people jointly provide for the flight costs. This is an important industry for us, and the major role in it is played by our pilots verification solutions and such matchmaking will be enabled through our website https://aerotrips.com. We shall inform you more, in details, through the following articles to come.

Now, let’s talk about using the blockchain technology and let us explain why it is a necessity for this industry. We have noticed that the above described flights are inexpensive, and in some cases, they are the only possible option. Let’s take a simple example:

Chances are that you wouldn’t want to fly somewhere out in the remote area since you don’t have any reliable and trustworthy information about the pilot flying this aircraft.

Through our solution, on the https://aerotrips.com portal, you could see the pilot’s real experience, rating, reviews and other information that will help you make a decision and choose this pilot or prefer any other pilot, all using our service. This approach is convenient for both the air travelers and the professional pilots. It goes without saying that now we are talking about good professional pilots. In our system, pilots who violate the rules simply won’t survive: with our criteria and guaranteed data reliability, ensured by the blockchain technology, nobody will ever turn to them.

You will fly only with verified professionals and these pilots will be happy with increase in customers.

According to our estimates, due to the contribution to the safety issue, with the adoption of our blockchain solution the entire general aviation market will grow and become more transparent.

In the next article of our series, we’ll talk about the issues associated with the recording of piloting experience and about its importance for the aviation safety. Also, we shall explain why the blockchain technology is by far the best solution for these issues in the long-term perspective.