Privacy Policy

Aeronautical Apex: electronic flight bag (EFB) applications for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and Android.

Effective date: July 22, 2026

Last updated: September 20, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains what information Aeronautical Apex LLC (“Aeronautical Apex,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects through the Aeronautical Apex mobile and desktop applications (the “App”), how we use it, and the choices you have. The App is a pilot’s electronic flight bag; it is an advisory tool and is not a substitute for official aeronautical information or the pilot-in-command’s authority and responsibility.

Summary. We collect the account, pilot, and flight-planning data you give us, plus your device location (including in the background, to record your flight track and, when you turn safety alerts on, to keep those alerts running) and technical/diagnostic data. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not run advertising or third-party tracking. In our iOS and Android apps, audio you capture for ATC transcription is converted to text on your device, and we do not upload or store that audio (if we ever offer a feature that sends audio to us, it will be strictly opt-in - see Section 2.2); in a web browser, that conversion is performed by your browser’s own speech service instead (see Section 2.2). Some features send text, photos, or files you import to our AI provider, and every community post, story, comment, marketplace listing, feature request and direct message is automatically screened for harmful content before it is published or delivered (see Section 5). This summary is for convenience only; the full policy governs.

1. Who we are

The data controller is:

Aeronautical Apex LLC
105 Brewery Rd
Walpole, NH 03608
Email: support@aeronauticalapex.com

2. Information we collect

2.1 Information you provide

Account information: email address, password (stored only as a secure hash by our authentication provider), your date of birth (required at sign-up to verify that you meet the App’s 18+ age requirement, and retained with your account), and, if you provide them, your name and callsign. If you sign in with Google, we receive your email address and, if available, your name and profile picture from Google.
Pilot information: certificates, ratings, flight hours, currency, and aircraft details you enter.
Flight and content data: routes, flight plans, logbook entries, checklists, aircraft profiles, notes, documents and files you upload to your in-app Library (stored privately in your account), and any posts, comments, or messages you create in community features.
Photos and images. If you add a photo or image to a community post or story, or set a profile picture (avatar), that image is uploaded from your device and stored on our servers, and it is shown to other users who can see that post, story, or profile. A photo you attach to a community post or story is also sent to our AI provider for an automated content-safety review before it is published (see Section 5.1). Photos are optional; the App works without them.
Communications: support requests and feedback you send us.

2.2 Information collected automatically

Location data (precise). With your permission, the App accesses your device’s GPS location for three kinds of features. (1) Flight-track recording, including in the background, so your breadcrumb keeps recording even when the app is closed or not in use (screen off, or while you use other apps). This track is recorded on your device and is uploaded to your account only if you choose to save it (see Section 6). (2) Foreground features, such as weather, terrain, and nearest-airport lookups, send your current position to retrieve information for your location; and if you file a maintenance squawk from a checklist, your position at that moment is saved with the squawk so you can see where the issue occurred. (3) Safety alerts. When you turn alerts on in Settings, the App keeps reading your location in the background, even while the app is closed or the screen is off, so terrain, obstacle, airspace, runway and TFR alerts can fire without a flight track being recorded. Alerts are off until you turn them on, the background location use stops the moment you turn them off, and those positions are used on your device only: they are not stored and not sent to us. (4) Live position sharing (the Who’s Flying feature) is not currently available. Earlier versions offered an optional, off-by-default broadcast of your position and callsign to other pilots, and we intend to reintroduce it with a proper in-app control. Today the App does not broadcast your position to other pilots. If the feature returns it will remain optional and off by default, and we will update this Policy before it ships. You can grant, limit, or revoke location permission in your device settings at any time; limiting it disables in-flight track recording and location-based lookups.
IP address. We record your public IP address in the audit trail when you accept our legal terms and when you request account deletion, for legal compliance and to detect fraud or abuse. We do not use it to determine or track your location, and we do not build a location profile from it. (Per-account device limits are enforced by a device identifier, not by your IP or location.) We also hold your public IP address for up to one hour, on our servers only, to limit how often an unsigned-in device can call our weather relay; it is used for nothing else and is not joined to your account.
Audio and transcripts (ATC transcription). When you use the ATC Live Transcription feature in our iOS and Android apps, the App captures microphone audio and converts it to text entirely on your device, using a speech-recognition model downloaded to your device. The audio itself is not uploaded to us or stored on our servers. Nothing in the App transmits captured audio today. If we later offer a feature that does - for example, an opt-in setting to submit a clip that transcribed poorly so we can improve accuracy - it will be off by default, described plainly at the point you enable it, and never switched on without your separate, express consent. We will update this policy before any such feature ships. If you instead use ATC transcription in a web browser, the App relies on your browser’s built-in speech-recognition service, and most browsers (including Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge) send the captured audio to the browser vendor’s own servers to convert it to text. That processing is performed by the browser vendor under its own privacy policy, not by us; we do not receive or store that audio. In both cases the resulting text transcript is saved to your account and is sent to our AI provider (Google Gemini, via our servers) to clean and structure it (see Section 5). You can delete saved transcripts with your account.
Device and diagnostic data. Device model, operating system and version, app version, and crash/error diagnostics, collected in two distinct ways. Crash reporting (Sentry) sends only a pseudonymous installation identifier with technical error details; it is not configured to collect your IP address, name, email, or account identity. In-app error and problem reports are different: when the App hits an error while you are signed in, or when you submit a “report a problem” form, we store the report in our own database linked to your account, together with the screen you were on, a per-session identifier, app version and platform, and any description you typed. We use these to investigate and fix issues and to respond to you, and they are automatically deleted after 90 days (see Section 7).
Push notification token. If you enable notifications, we receive a device push token from the platform’s messaging service to deliver notifications.

2.3 Payment information

Subscriptions are purchased through the Apple App Store or Google Play, or, on web and desktop, directly from us using Stripe as our payment processor. Entitlements from App Store and Google Play purchases are managed through our billing provider (RevenueCat). Payment card details are handled by Apple, Google, Stripe, and their respective processors under their own privacy policies. We never receive or store your full payment card number.

2.4 What we do not collect

The App does not access your contacts, calendar, or your device’s health platforms (such as Apple Health or Health Connect). It uses your camera, photo library, or file picker only when you choose to add a file - a photo for a community post, story, or profile picture; a document or image for your in-app Library; or a checklist file you scan - and only the file you select or capture is uploaded (see Sections 2.1 and 5). The App does not use advertising identifiers and does not include any third-party advertising, analytics, attribution, or cross-app tracking technologies. The App does not offer a biometric app lock and does not use your device’s biometric sensors, so we never receive or store biometric data of any kind.

While alerts are armed, the App also reads your device’s barometer, to estimate cabin pressure altitude, and its battery, charging and thermal state, for device alerts; these readings are used only on your device at the moment they are taken, are not stored, and are never transmitted to us or to anyone else. On iOS the barometer is covered by the Motion permission, which you can turn off at any time in your device settings.

3. How we use information

To provide, operate, secure, and maintain the App and its features;
To render your position and record your flight track;
To generate flight-planning outputs, weather briefings, and related advisory information;
To process and manage your subscription;
To provide AI-assisted features (see Section 5);
To detect, prevent, and respond to fraud, abuse, security incidents, and violations of our terms, including enforcing device limits;
To communicate with you about the App and respond to support requests;
To comply with legal obligations and maintain required records.

4. How information is shared

We do not sell your personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We share information only as follows:

Other pilots (live location sharing - not currently available). The Who’s Flying feature, which let pilots optionally broadcast their position and callsign to other pilots, is not currently available, and no position sharing with other pilots occurs today. If we reintroduce it, it will be optional and off by default, and this Policy will be updated first. See Sections 2.2 and 6.
Other users (community features). Content you choose to share in community features, including posts, comments, and any photos or images you attach, and your profile picture, is visible to other users of the App. You choose what to post, and you can delete content you have posted.
Service providers (subprocessors) that operate the App on our behalf, under confidentiality obligations, and are listed in Section 11.
Aviation data providers, to retrieve the aeronautical information you request (weather, NOTAMs, TFRs, charts, terrain elevation). Most of these requests are relayed through our own servers, so the provider sees our server’s address rather than yours; map and chart imagery tiles are requested directly by the App, so those providers receive your device’s IP address and the map area requested.
Legal and safety: to comply with law, subpoenas, or lawful requests, and to protect the rights, property, or safety of Aeronautical Apex, our users, or the public.
Business transfers: in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, subject to this Policy.
With your consent, or in aggregated or de-identified form that cannot reasonably identify you.

5. AI-assisted features

Some features send what you submit to a third-party AI service, Google Gemini, through our servers, to produce advisory output. Depending on the feature, this can include text, photos, or documents:

Text - questions you ask the in-app Co-Pilot, flight and weather details you ask us to analyze, and the text of your ATC transcripts (sent so they can be punctuated and structured).
Photos - a photo you attach to a community post or story is sent for an automated content-safety review before it is published (see Section 5.1).
Documents - if you import a checklist, the file you upload (a PDF or image) is sent so the checklist items can be read out of it.

We do not send audio to this service. ATC audio is converted to text before anything is sent, as described in Section 2.2. We do not permit your personal data to be used to train the provider’s AI models. Data processed by this service is subject to the provider’s privacy terms and may be processed outside your country.

AI-generated output is advisory only and can be incomplete or wrong. It is not a source of official aeronautical information, and you must verify it against official sources before relying on it in flight.

5.1 Automated content moderation

Every community post, story, comment, marketplace listing, feature request and direct message is screened automatically before it is published or delivered. The text you wrote and any photo you attached are sent to Google Gemini and checked against our content rules (for example nudity or sexual content, graphic violence, hate speech, personal information about others, spam, and illegal activity). This screening is automatic, applies to all users, and cannot be turned off; it runs only on content you submit for publication or send to another user. If content is rejected, we tell you and it is not posted or delivered, and we record the violation category together with your account identifier so that we can act on repeat violations. A photo rejected by this screening is not published and, in the ordinary case, is not stored on our servers. There is one narrow exception: if the screening indicates an image may depict the sexual exploitation of a minor, United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2258A) requires us to report it to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and to preserve the material. In that case the image is preserved in a restricted, access-controlled store used solely for that legally required report and preservation period, and the account is permanently banned.

6. Location data: how it is handled

Flight-track recording (background). When you start recording a flight track, the App collects your location in the background, even when the app is closed or not in use, so the breadcrumb keeps logging with the screen off. This background track is stored on your device as you fly and is not streamed or shared with anyone in real time. When you finish, you choose whether to save the track to your account (stored on our servers, in your flight-tracks records, so it is available when you sign in again) or discard it; a discarded track never leaves your device. Background location is accessed only while you are actively recording a track.

Safety alerts (background). While alerts are armed, the App holds a background location watch of its own so the alerts keep working with the app in the background and no recording running. On iOS this uses the Always location permission; on Android the notification says the App is watching for alerts. Nothing from that watch is stored or transmitted. Turning alerts off releases it.

Live position sharing (Who’s Flying) - not currently available. Earlier versions of the App offered an optional feature, off by default, that broadcast a pilot’s real-time position and callsign to other pilots. That feature is not currently available: the App does not broadcast your position to other pilots today, and nothing you do in the App shares your live location with other users. We intend to reintroduce the feature with a proper in-app control; if we do, it will remain optional and off by default, and we will update this Policy before it ships.

Foreground location features. Other features send your current position to retrieve information relevant to where you are: weather lookups transmit your coordinates (relayed through our servers to third-party weather providers); terrain elevation is read from a terrain pack on your device when one covers the area, and otherwise the coordinates of the points being checked are sent to our elevation service, which answers from the same dataset and keeps no record of them; and the nearest-airport feature uses your position to query our own airport database. These lookups occur while you are actively using the App. Additionally, if you file a maintenance squawk from a checklist, your position at the moment you file it is stored with the squawk in your account, so you can later see where the issue occurred.

We do not use location to build advertising or marketing profiles, and your location is never sold or used for advertising. You control location permission through your device settings and may disable it at any time.

7. Data retention

We retain your personal information for as long as your account is active and as needed to provide the App. When you delete your account (Settings → Delete Account):

Your profile, flight plans, logbook, aircraft, checklists, saved plans, saved flight tracks, ATC transcripts, custom airports, and notes are removed from our active databases;
Your posts, comments, and messages in shared community features are deleted;
Your sign-in credentials are deleted, ending your ability to log in;
We retain a limited deletion record for legal, audit, and fraud-prevention purposes: a one-way hash of your email (not your email itself), your subscription tier at deletion, approximate account-creation date, deletion timestamp, and the IP address/user agent at deletion.

Error and problem reports. In-app error reports and problem reports linked to your account (Section 2.2) are automatically deleted 90 days after they are created, whether or not you delete your account.

Records of your acceptance of our legal terms, and the deletion record described above, may be retained on a long-term basis to meet legal and audit obligations. Deleting your account does not cancel a subscription; cancel that separately through the App Store or Google Play.

8. Your rights and choices

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to the processing of your personal information, to receive it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent. You can edit much of your information in the App directly, delete your account from Settings, and control location and notification permissions in your device settings. To exercise other rights, contact support@aeronauticalapex.com. We will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights.

9. Children’s privacy

The App is for pilots and student pilots and is not directed to anyone under 18; you must be at least 18 to use it. It is also not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you believe a child under 13 has provided us personal information, contact support@aeronauticalapex.com and we will delete it.

10. Legal bases (EEA/UK/Switzerland)

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, we process your personal data on the following legal bases: performance of our contract with you; our legitimate interests in operating, securing, and improving the App; your consent (for example, for location access and notifications); and compliance with legal obligations. You may lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority.

11. Service providers (subprocessors)

Provider	Purpose	Data involved
Supabase	Database, authentication, backend functions, storage	Account, pilot, and content data (hosted in the United States)
Google (Gemini API)	AI-assisted analysis and automated content moderation	Text you submit to AI features; ATC transcript text; photos you attach to community posts and stories; checklist files (PDF or image) you import (all relayed via our servers)
Google (Sign-In)	Optional authentication	Email, name, profile picture
Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging)	Push notifications	Device push token
Apple & Google Play	Subscription purchases	Purchase records (payment details held by them)
RevenueCat	Subscription entitlement management	Pseudonymous account identifier, purchase status
Stripe	Payment processing for web and desktop subscriptions purchased directly from us	Billing and payment details you enter at checkout, plus your account email address and a pseudonymous account identifier, which we pass to Stripe to pre-fill checkout and link the subscription to your account (Stripe stores card data; we never receive your full card number)
Sentry	Crash and error diagnostics	Pseudonymous account identifier, technical error data
Vercel	Website hosting and cookieless analytics	Marketing-website requests; a pseudonymous visitor signal derived from IP address and user agent, used only for aggregate audience measurement (see Section 15)
Aviation data providers (FAA, NOAA/NWS, Aviation Weather Center, Open-Meteo, Esri/ArcGIS, OpenAIP, RainViewer)	Weather, NOTAMs, TFRs, charts, terrain, map imagery	Requested locations/route points; for map imagery fetched directly by the App, your IP address and map area
CARTO (basemaps.cartocdn.com)	Street/dark basemap tiles	Your IP address and the map area requested (fetched directly by the App)
Iowa State University Mesonet	NEXRAD weather-radar tiles over the United States	Your IP address and the map area requested (fetched directly by the App)
OpenStreetMap Foundation	Map tiles in the custom-airport location picker	Your IP address and the map area requested (fetched directly by the App)
Cloudflare (cdnjs)	Map marker image assets	Your IP address (fetched directly by the App when the map loads)
OurAirports (community database, served via GitHub Pages)	Worldwide airport reference data downloads	Your IP address at download time
ipify (api.ipify.org)	Look up your public IP to record in consent-acceptance and account-deletion audit records	Public IP address

12. International data transfers

We are based in the United States, and your information is processed and stored in the United States and other countries where our service providers operate. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards for such transfers.

13. State privacy rights (United States)

We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended) or comparable state laws. If you are a resident of California or another state with applicable privacy rights, you may exercise the rights described in Section 8 by contacting support@aeronauticalapex.com.

14. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information, including encryption in transit, access controls, and secure credential storage handled by our authentication provider. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

15. The Marketing Website

Most of this Policy describes the App. This section covers our public marketing website at aeronauticalapex.com, which you can browse without an account.

Audience measurement. The website uses Vercel Analytics to measure aggregate traffic, such as page views and general visitor trends. It is cookieless and first-party: it does not track you across other websites, it does not build a cross-site profile of you, and it is not connected to any advertising network. It processes a pseudonymous visitor signal derived from your IP address and user agent, and that signal is used only for aggregate audience measurement.
Waitlist sign-up. If you join our launch list, we collect the email address you submit and store it in our database. We use this solely to notify you when we launch, and we will remove you from the list on request at support@aeronauticalapex.com.
Affiliate links. Some product links on the website (for example, links to aviation accessories such as audio cables) are affiliate links. Clicking one takes you to the retailer’s site, where the retailer’s own privacy policy governs; no retailer code runs on our website, and we receive only aggregate commission reporting from the retailer - never your identity, browsing activity, or purchase details. Affiliate links are labeled where they appear.

The website runs no third-party advertising code and no cross-site tracking. Apart from this section, the rest of this Policy concerns the App.

16. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. Your continued use of the App after an update means you accept the revised Policy.

17. Contact us

Questions about this Policy or your personal information:

Aeronautical Apex LLC
105 Brewery Rd
Walpole, NH 03608
support@aeronauticalapex.com