Aloft’s new Air Aware drone app to replace ubiquitous B4UFLY tool

Drone fleet and airspace management tech specialist Aloft has announced the release of its new UAV flight planning tool Air Aware, an application the company says “effectively replaces the B4UFLY app.”

Release of the new app will be headline news to drone pilots, given the ubiquity of B4UFLY’s use in preparing flights. The result of a 2019 partnership between Aloft’s previous Kitty Hawk incarnation and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the app has become a must-use tool for attaining situational awareness and verifying airspace permissions ahead of outings, and has facilitated over 30 million searches. 

The company’s app processing low altitude authorization and notification capability request is similarly an essential point of passage for anyone seeking FAA nighttime flight or restricted airspace permissions, handling over a million of those solicitations thus far.

Aloft has used that experience to improve and innovate its new Air Aware application. The next-generation asset is described as providing “unparalleled support to drone pilots, enhancing safety and compliance with dynamic, real-time data.”

In doing so, Aloft has included its existing Notify & Fly capabilities in Air Aware, which the company says “have been used hundreds of thousands of times voluntarily by pilots to share their flight activity with their fellow airspace users and stakeholders.”

The rollout of the new app also inevitably means curtains for B4UFLY, which will remain functional but no longer updated, with Air Aware becoming the sole focal point of Aloft’s future development.  

The startup understands the turning of that page will not be greeted joyously by the more habit-entrenched drone pilots, but calls the switch necessary to keep pace with the continued progress of UAV tech and activities, and its own capacities for enabling flights.

“This shift ensures that users have access to the most advanced tools in the industry,” says Aloft. “Air Aware is not simply the next-generation replacement of B4UFLY, but it’s a platform that we want to evolve.” 

The new Aloft Air Aware can now be downloaded from the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, or using (and for) desktop computers at https://airaware.aloft.ai.