Every operation at your field, captured automatically.
Skylume turns one plug-in receiver into a record of who flew in and out. Takeoffs, landings, touch-and-gos, and low passes are logged with the runway, time, aircraft type, and registered owner, without a control tower or a clipboard on the ramp. A year of it is the operations count behind your airport's next FAA or state grant request.
The receiver sets itself up and starts logging with the first aircraft it hears.
The operations record behind your next grant request.
When an airport asks the FAA or the state to help pay for runway work, the request rests on which aircraft use the runway and how often. At a field without a tower that figure is usually an estimate, and FAA guidance says justified development has to be anchored in actual activity.
- The FAA sizes a runway for its critical aircraft, the most demanding type that makes regular use of it, which means 500 operations a year, not counting touch-and-gos. Each operation Skylume logs carries the runway and the aircraft's make and model.
- The FAA wants that count for the most recent twelve months. The receiver starts counting the day it's installed, so a year later the record covers a full review period.
- State aviation offices use activity figures too. ADOT, for one, asks airports to report their annual operations and uses them when it reviews State/Local grant applications.
- Any date range exports to CSV or Excel for your planning consultant or a grant application.
From shipping box to live dashboard in an afternoon.
Setup needs a power outlet and an antenna. Nothing about how your field operates changes.
Plug in the receiver
The unit ships pre-configured. Connect the antenna and power and it checks in with Skylume on its own within minutes. Once it is assigned to your airport, logging starts.
It logs every operation
The receiver decodes each ADS-B-equipped aircraft in range, looks it up in the FAA registry, and matches its track to your runways. Touch-and-gos and low passes are logged along with full stops.
Open the dashboard
Watch traffic on a live map of your field, see operations by hour, day, and month, and export any date range to CSV or Excel. The numbers start with your first day of traffic.
One morning at a training field, as Skylume logs it.
Every row was recorded by the receiver. Nobody typed anything in.
The same record feeds a live map of your runways and taxiways, charts by hour, day, and month, economic-impact figures with editable assumptions, the latest METAR plus the TAF where one is issued, CSV and Excel exports, and an FAA 5010 summary. For FBOs that sell fuel, it can also match each visit to your fuel sales and list the visiting aircraft that left without one.
Counting airplanes is the easy part.
The difference is what gets counted, and whether you can stand behind the number when someone challenges it.
Honest numbers
Measured figures are marked as measured. Modeled figures show the assumptions behind them, and you can edit every one. You only report numbers you can defend.
Clear about coverage
Skylume counts aircraft that broadcast ADS-B. That's nearly every jet and turboprop and a little over half of piston aircraft, and we'll tell you what it means for your field before you sign up.
On duty around the clock
The receiver runs day and night, so the 6 a.m. medevac departure and the Sunday evening pattern session make it into the record even when nobody is at the desk.
Your data stays yours
Each operator's data is kept apart from every other customer's, and Skylume can run on servers you control. Your field's record belongs to your field.
Let's talk about your field.
Send us a note and we'll set up a walkthrough. You don't need an account.