SkyGuru to Appease Flyer Fears With API for Airports, Airlines and OEMs

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    SkyGuru founder Alex Gervash
    SkyGuru founder Alex Gervash at Aircraft Interiors Expo 2017. Image: Maxim Sergienko

    APEX Insight: SkyGuru’s API puts it one step closer to achieving the goal of helping every passenger feel more confident and comfortable while flying.

    SkyGuru, a mobile app designed to alleviate in-flight anxiety, has launched a universal platform for airlines, airports, aircraft manufacturers and in-flight entertainment (IFE) system providers. The application programming interface (API) gives partners access to SkyGuru’s professional flight data, including meteorological updates from departure and arrival airports, flight turbulence indices and predictions, anticipated flight times and wind changes and up-to-date calculations of aircraft positioning. All data can be accessed on airplane mode, and without any external connection to GPS, Wi-Fi or 3G.

    Airline partners will be able to integrate the data into their own software, expanding their content library. SkyGuru promotes the API as an alternative for airlines whose aircraft aren’t equipped with built-in IFE systems but are nonetheless interested in developing their infotainment offerings. SkyGuru founder Alex Gervash insists the API is also beneficial to cabin crewmembers, who can plan the timing of drink and food services around expected bouts of moderate and severe turbulence.

    Airports can use the API to provide travelers with more accurate flight duration predictions and a clearer picture of the experience they can expect on board. Current flight duration times listed on tickets, Gervash says, are inaccurate. “They always write for Moscow to JFK that it’s 10 hours and 50 minutes, but it never takes 10 hours and 50 minutes. They can’t know what the wind is going to be, but we can.”

    “They can’t know what the wind is going to be, but we can.” – Alex Gervash, SkyGuru

    The SkyGuru mobile app uses professional aviation data and information collected from passengers’ iPhone sensors to provide real-time information about the in-flight experience. According to Gervash, who is also a certified pilot and the director of the Fearless Flying research and therapy center, situational understanding decreases stress levels by redirecting passengers’ wondering imaginations to the facts. “Thirty to 40 percent [of flyers] have some discomfort – it can be from very light discomfort to a full-blown panic attack … So we’ve developed technology that acts like a pilot who is sitting next to an anxious passenger, just explaining everything, supporting them, predicting things, commenting on things.”

    SkyGuru is already being consulted by more than 55,000 users, and Gervash hopes that by being offered as an API, it can reach even more. “This is only the first step toward realizing our goal of helping every passenger become more well-informed, confident and comfortable,” Gervash says. “In the near future, we’d like to see, for example, online flight ticket sales platforms or search engines use the API to give customers turbulence predictions, flight times that account for wind changes and airport weather information.”

    Partners can select from two classes of data – one with 85 percent accuracy and the other with 58 percent – and several packages that are priced according to the number of expected queries. SkyGuru is reportedly drawing “great interest” from airlines, IFE system providers and a “big” aircraft manufacturer – the last of which, Gervash says, is already close to the flight test stage, with plans for SkyGuru “to be part of its future airplane technology.”