Smarter Fly screens, Mayday help for everyone, a web planner that thinks like the phone, and ridge lift that reads the hill.

This update brings together several weeks of work on the development branch. It covers the Fly screen, emergency help, planning on the web and phone, soaring and clubs, and the work underneath that keeps it all fast and steady.

🆘 Mayday help for every pilot

• Go there: from the Mayday panel, Go there sets a direct route to the best emergency field, ranked by your aircraft’s own glide figure. With no glide figure, fields are ranked by distance and marked “Glide range unknown”. Next field and the field’s frequency are one tap away, and no account is needed (F1914).
• Emergency checklists: the Mayday screen opens the emergency checklist for the aircraft you’re flying, or a general list for its class (F1914).
• After landing: Mayday help is in the Flight menu in the air and after you land or stop (F1914).

🛩️ Fly screens that show what matters

• Smart instrument strip: the Flight page is now one compact strip. Threat covers terrain, airspace and the nearest traffic. Way out shows your next waypoint or the nearest field in reach, with bearing and distance in one cell. Endurance shows fuel, then ETA. A reading that doesn’t apply takes no room, and one without data says NO DATA (F1919, F1921).
• Nearest aerodrome: with no route and no field in reach, Way out shows the nearest aerodrome (F1921).
• New readouts: ETA on Route, the nearest airspace change in any direction on Airspace and Flight, and the wind with its source on Weather, Vario, Flight and Land-out (F1898).
• MacCready and speed to fly: glider pilots get both on Route, worked out from the aircraft’s polar (F1597, F1898).
• Each screen for its job: the default Fly screens now carry only the layers each one is for, so weather appears on Weather rather than everywhere (F1897).
• One notification bar: alerts and information share a single bar. A traffic pick shows a small information card you can press for the full details (F1929, F562).
• Steady layout: the bottom strip stays put as notifications come and go, and a long press on the recentre button brings up zoom buttons (F1917, F1918).
• HDG FIELD: shows the nearest field in reach and its distance (F534).
• Synthetic vision: terrain is drawn even before you have a heading or course (F955).
• Manual wind: you can set it from the Fly pages, including on Fly Lite (F1898).

📡 Traffic

• Wider coverage: we’ve added another traffic source to the picture (F1938).
• One identity per aircraft: reports about the same aircraft from different sources are merged into one identity (F580).
• Clearer source switches: traffic sources come down to three switches: our API, a direct feed, and your own local integrations (F1930).
• Your receivers on every plan: ADS-B, GDL90, FLARM and glasses connections are open on every plan (F1913).
• Share my position: when it’s off, your position isn’t shared, from the moment the app starts (F477).

⛰️ Ridge lift on the phone

• Ridge layer: within about 5 km, the ridge layer shows lift bands and lee warnings worked out from the live wind and the shape of the hill. It hides itself when the wind is stale or assumed, and it works offline (F1489).
• Built on real hills: it uses a UK catalogue of 21,785 ridge faces and precomputed wind packs for the hills. We tuned it against high-resolution simulations of UK sites from Halton to the Long Mynd (F1485, F1547, F1895, F1901).
• Soaring forecast in flight: the day’s soaring forecast, cached before take-off, can be read in the air, with when it was fetched and how far away it applies (F1934).

🗺️ Planning on the web, the way the phone does it

• Route planner: the web plans with the same router and airspace choices as the phone. It has an airspace tray, a pin popup with stop actions, a leg table and profile, local time, a Ready check and Set as alternate (F1841, F1842, F1843).
• Three sections: the web planner is split into Route, Aircraft and load, and Brief and file. Each shows a live status, and a bar along the bottom gives time, distance, fuel, take-off weight and what’s left to do (F1916).
• Wind from the forecast: the web planner fills the wind from the forecast. On both web and phone, the wind line names the forecast it came from (F1591).
• Task planner: you edit task points in their own row. Points are numbered, linked between the list and the map, and can be dragged on the map. Zones face along their legs, and the popup shows the bearing (F1844, F1905).
• Plan entry: Plans has three buttons on web and phone: Plan a flight, Plan a task and Add by code. A new task starts in a glider (F1905, F1923).

✅ A more honest briefing

• Grounded aircraft: an aircraft marked unfit to fly is shown as grounded on the hangar card, in the planner, at the Ready and File checks and on the phone (F1924).
• Estimated glide: a glide ratio we’ve estimated is marked “estimated” wherever it is shown or used for reach. Once you set it yourself, it’s yours (F1925).
• Fuel type: the planner asks for a fuel type before it shows any fuel weight. Jet A-1 and diesel are weighed at their own density (F1926, F06).
• Airspace data: where airspace data is missing, the planner says so rather than showing all clear (F1843, F1596).
• Route NOTAMs: they cover a 10 NM corridor along your route and are cached for offline use on the Fly map (F1906).
• Ready check: it flags fuel or weight and balance that need working out again, and stale figures are marked (F1916).
• Airspace labels: surface floors read SFC, and en-route ATZs ask for permission (F401, F1368).
• Your numbers kept: saved speeds and altitudes come back exactly as you typed them (F721).
• Exports: flight PDF and spreadsheet exports show distance, altitude and speed in the units they label (F1066).
• Type data: PA-28-181 and G109B never-exceed speeds come from the type certificate, with each speed cited (F985).

✈️ Hangar, clubs and getting around

• Finding a type: type search forgives a small typo, and on the web there’s an Add by type card on the first step of adding an aircraft (F1171, F1922).
• Club bookings: you can book from the club calendar, either as one stretch or as separate days, and see straight away whether the booking works. Club staff can book club aircraft from the phone (F1822, F1824, F1839).
• Syndicates and clubs: Syndicate has its own tab on the web aircraft page. Every pilot has a Club tab, with their own clubs listed first (F1793, F1771).
• Instructor tasks: tasks from your instructor appear at the top of Plans, and ones still to accept are under Needs you on Home (F1821, F1788).
• Phone menu: a side drawer behind a Menu button holds every place in the app (F1815).
• Plans: raw METAR and TAF are free on every plan, with the VFR verdict on paid plans. IGC export is included on Fly Lite. Flown plans don’t count toward your saved-plan limit (F1923, F1905).
• The name: the app now spells its name Vela Air (F1940).

🛠️ Under the hood: faster on the phone

• Ridge lift engine: the ridge assessment now runs natively, in one call where it used to take about 28,000. That keeps the ridge layer quick to update as the wind or your position changes (F1902).
• Offline terrain: terrain already on your phone loads with no signal, and the reach fan uses it offline (F1727).
• Crash reports: crash reports from release builds now arrive readable, so we can find and fix problems sooner (F1893).

🔒 Security

• Dependencies: we’ve applied security updates across the platform’s dependencies, part of our continuing work to keep it current (F1888, F1890, F1900, F1941).
• Testing: we ran a penetration test against the platform and acted on its findings.
• Shared phones: signing out clears every pilot’s cached data from the phone (F1935).

🔭 Coming next

• Wind worked out in the cruise from your heading and GPS track (F1932).
• A recent forecast that’s still valid used for the wind when no fresh one is available, shown with its age (F1933).
• Club competitions from entry to results, on web and phone (F1912).
• Plan a task as its own screen on the phone (F1848).