About SkyDemon

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.

Innovative Market Leader

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 pioneered, many of which our competition are now attempting to copy.

• SkyDemon Vector Charts

  We invented the modern aviation vector chart back in 2009 with the first release of SkyDemon. Previously, one well-known aviation GPS supplier had already made the move to vector maps but in a very primitive form, not useable as a substitute for static charts designed for printing. When pilots switch to SkyDemon charts they are amazed by the incredible simplicity and clarity of the information presented, and the fact that nothing has been compromised in order to achieve it. Our charts adapt themselves to you; your planning and your flying.

• Virtual Radar
  

  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.

• Airspace Warnings with Advisory
  

  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. Since we introduced our warnings in September 2009 UK pilots have been using this feature and airspace infringements have dropped.

• Two-Click Flightplan Filing

  In early 2011 we partnered with EuroFPL to bring two-click filing of VFR flightplans into SkyDemon. Nobody had ever done this before, and pilots were forced to either fax a paper form or use a very tedious online version. Our idea was that once someone has planned their route in SkyDemon, all it should take is a couple of clicks to file a flightplan representing that route. Needless to say, the feature has proved incredibly popular.

• More in the Box

  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. We have expanded to make our service available on four platforms, and 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!

Stability

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 technology we have developed that powers the SkyDemon product line. This technology is robust and is behind all our different platform products. The speed and quality of our development work is unsurpassed (our competition have tried).

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.

In 2010 the sales of our flight-planning software did extremely well, and SkyDemon became the standard for flight-planning in the UK. From this we were able to develop the first in our own range of handheld aviation GPS units, and these went on sale in September 2010. While many of our competitors were still producing devices that did little more than move scanned paper charts around an aircraft symbol, our devices gave pilots an unparalleled level of situational awareness and safety.

2011 saw us broaden our horizons further afield, gaining massive popularity 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.

In 2012 we made a huge splash with the release of SkyDemon for iPad, which within two months became the dominant aviation app on the platform. To this date our app is the highest-rated (by users) aviation planning/navigation app available.