Building a better booking system for group aircraft

[TheUKDave]

I'm part of a small aircraft syndicate and, like many of you, have spent years wrestling with the existing booking tools. I've been building something to scratch my own itch and I'm now at the point where I'd like some outside eyes on it before opening it up for hands-on testing in the next few weeks.

First, some context on why I started. I've used both Goboko and Shlott, and while they both technically work, neither has ever felt like it was built for how syndicates actually operate.

Shlott is free for small groups, which is genuinely appealing and why our group used it for quite a while, but its UI is basic to say the least. Ultimately I guess it's a generic booking system that happens to be used by flying clubs, but it's not aviation-aware. There's no native app either, with the workaround being to "add to home screen" via Safari, and that being the case there's obviously no offline capability. Bottom line for me/us was that the lack of a monthly view is just too much of an omission, so we switched to Goboko.

Now Goboko has been around since 2003 ... and I think you can tell! The calendar is a monthly grid (yay!), but you have to tap individual days to see what's going on - there's no way to see at a glance whether a block is your booking, someone else's, or the aircraft is sitting in maintenance. The mobile app is a Cordova wrapper that hasn't had a meaningful update since mid-2022, and in my opinion while less clunky than Shlott, is still pretty clunky. The whole experience feels like navigating a system that was designed around the database rather than around the pilot.

The thing I kept coming back to was: I want to see at a glance where the plane is booked/bookable, where I already have it booked, and to have minimum clicks to make a booking. And I didn't think that was too much to ask, so I've been building something that does it. When I sat down to really plan it out, and write out my dream feature list.

What I've ended up with is a system where the booking calendar, maintenance status, billing, and tech log aren't separate modules bolted together. They're the same system. You can see your bookings, partner bookings, and downtime as distinct visual layers without clicking into anything. A grounding squawk blocks the calendar automatically. It works offline and syncs when you get signal back with automatic conflict resolution. Built in Flutter so it runs properly on iOS, Android, and web from the same codebase.

On the operational side, Tach/Hobbs readings feed straight into the billing. There's a super quick flow to log the start and end of a flight: it uses GPS to detect your airfield and notes the current time, then fills out the tech log for you. You can submit expenses by taking a photo, set up monthlies, configure different member rates or wet/dry rates, and all of that feeds into the billing system too.

At the moment I'm after two things:
1. Feedback on the concept: does this match the problems you actually have, or am I solving the wrong thing? Are there features your syndicate desperately needs that I might not have thought of?
2. In a couple of weeks I'll be opening up hands-on beta access. If you'd be interested in putting it through its paces with your group, I'd welcome the help.

Happy to answer questions or take a kicking. Not trying to sell anything, it's not launched yet and I genuinely want to know if this is useful before it is.