Help & Support
We are an independent, successful software company based in the UK. We're committed to designing the highest-quality software and integrating the highest-quality aeronautical data, in order to provide a service that saves pilots time and money by making flying much easier.
Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at SkyDemon, driven by a our own designs and influenced by feedback from thousands of subscribers. Almost every company in our industry describes themselves as a market leader, but in our case, we can actually prove it. Here are just a few examples of the features we have invented, most of which are now standard among all general aviation software.
This is a technology that shows a unique projection of a planned route, the trajectory ahead while flying, or a log of a flight previously undertaken. Your passage through space and time is illustrated cleanly, with terrain, airspace, obstructions, airfields and other waypoints depicted intuitively, making it very easy to spot hazards or incursions. Virtual Radar is one of the most significant increases we make to your situational awareness.
When flying towards airspace that is controlled or potentially dangerous, we show warnings onscreen to help you stay safe. When we started, nobody else was doing this. It is now much more commonplace but our warnings still lead the way, offering a callsign and frequency where possible so the pilot has options at their disposal.
SkyDemon is a premium product; the finest product of its kind. Since we launched we have more than quadrupled the features we include while maintaining a simple, easy-to-use product. In the beginning we supported PC and embedded Windows CE operating systems; now we have iOS, Android and Web versions too. While doing all this, we have never increased the price. Customers get the clearest and most accurate charts available, reliable weather and NOTAM briefing, the most powerful software in the industry and many airfield plates all included in their subscription with no hidden extra charges. Flying is expensive enough!
SkyDemon is an independent British company and we're owned entirely by our developers, all of whom are passionate about what they do. We've always been profitable and have never borrowed a penny from anybody. We consider it a real privilege to have thousands of people trusting our products every day, and it's great fun to be able to make such a huge difference in aviation.
Our biggest asset is the intellectual property we have developed that powers the SkyDemon product line. Superbly engineered, much of our source code is shared between the various platform versions of SkyDemon, but with native presentation layers developed for each supported device. This means that our customers get the same robust SkyDemon functionality delivered through an experience that feels just right for the type of device they're using.
Over the years we have built one of the most respected brands in European general aviation. We are trusted and loved by our subscribers because of the approach we take to ensuring their lives are made as easy as possible. We work tirelessly to take away the tedious and boring aspects of VFR flying, dealing with the many and varied problems associated with the provision of aeronautical data and services, leaving the customer only with the very enjoyable parts.
We have established partnerships with a small number of carefully selected companies over the years, to whom we bring significant revenue streams in return for integrating their excellent products within the SkyDemon platform. Services like EuroFPL flightplan filing and products like Pooley's and DFS airfield plates, for example.
Company History
SkyDemon is a trading name of Divelements Limited. In 2006 Tim Dawson, managing director and chief software architect at Divelements, earned his private pilot's license. Shortly afterwards he began work on a tool to help him plan VFR flights, bringing together the various disparate pieces of information needed for such pilots to make decisions before flight. The tool continued to be developed as a hobby. In 2009 the technology used in the tool was ported to Windows CE and GPS functionality added, and at this point the decision was made to launch the project commercially. Thus we entered the flight-planning and aviation GPS moving map industries; two industries that had until that point stagnated and received little of the attention they deserve.
This year saw us broaden our horizons further afield, gaining significant traction in Europe. With the release of SkyDemon 2.0 the product integrated an unparalleled amount of helpful briefing data and content, and supported instant filing of VFR flightplans. We released SkyDemon Light, a basic flight-planning tool completely free of charge to UK pilots and endorsed by NATS. Our new Mobile MD GPS became popular overnight, and SkyDemon Web was launched so that our subscribers could access the service more easily when away from home.
This was the year of the iPad. We made a huge splash with the release of SkyDemon for iPad early in the year, which within two months became the dominant European aviation app on the platform. To date, SkyDemon for iPad remains the highest-rated (by users) aviation planning/navigation app available. We also started integrating airfield plates, licensed from all European AIPs and provided for free to all subscribers, and also with paid content licensed from carefully selected local suppliers like Pooley's. We experienced huge growth among our subscriber base due in part to our availability on more platforms.
With the rapid rise in popularity of the Android platform, we spent the first few months of 2013 writing SkyDemon for Android and bringing it to market. Needless to say, this product is now the dominant general aviation software on the Android platform in Europe. Later in the year we brought SkyDemon to iPhone, again due to popular demand. Georeferenced plates became more and more popular as we expanded the number of third-party providers who sell their content through SkyDemon. Again, we experienced huge growth in our subscriber numbers as our product became available on more platforms, particularly in mainland Europe.
