SkyAware

The Project

SkyAware is an aviation-focused mobile application designed to enhance flight safety and simplify pre-flight planning. Built using Flutter and powered by Gemini AI, the app acts as a decision support system for pilots. Its core function is to ingest complex, cryptic aviation weather reports—specifically METARs and TAFs—and instantly parse them into intuitive, actionable safety assessments. Furthermore, it integrates flight routing tools that adhere strictly to real-world aviation navigation standards. The inspiration for SkyAware came from studying aviation history and observing how many tragic accidents are caused by spatial disorientation and poor situational judgment in the cockpit. As a student pilot, I realized that the cognitive load of manually decoding dense, alphanumeric weather reports can easily distract a pilot and contribute to a dangerous loss of situational awareness. I wanted to use large language models to alleviate this burden. By translating raw meteorological data into clear, immediate safety assessments, the app aims to reduce cognitive overload and help pilots maintain the clear judgment needed to navigate safely and avoid disorientation. The most significant technical challenge was marrying the flexibility of artificial intelligence with the rigid, zero-tolerance safety standards of aviation navigation. For example, implementing the "Direct To" routing logic required precise prompt engineering and complex state management. I had to strictly constrain the AI to ensure that initiating a "Direct To" command would correctly skip intermediate waypoints while definitively locking in the final destination, preventing the AI from hallucinating or altering the rest of the flight plan. Balancing this strict deterministic logic with dynamic AI weather parsing was a demanding but highly rewarding engineering puzzle.

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