Gatwick GO!

Might as well make people do something interesting instead of dawdle on their phones in Gatwick for the next 30 minutes

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Inspiration

Gatwick Airport has many people waiting & doing nothing other than doomscrolling on their phone 30 minutes until the takeoff. We realised that an addicting game could combat this, allowing users to "chase" airplanes like an "Airplane Raid", akin to Pokemon's famous raids and also earn rewards for themselves.

What it does

While waiting for their flight, passengers can open the Gatwick GO! web app and spot real aircraft taking off or taxiing outside the terminal windows. Each plane is “captured” as a collectible digital card, earning points based on the airline, destination, or rarity of the aircraft. Special destinations or daily "shiny" flights act as rare finds, encouraging players to keep watching and engaging with the airport environment.

The experience is designed to last 15–30 minutes, perfectly matching gate wait times. A user must scan a plane tickets qr code to confirm that he/she is eligible to play. Players build a collection, track their points, and unlock rewards such as airport discounts, lounge perks, parking vouchers, or airline sponsored upgrades. Accounts are created using passwordless email sign-in, making onboarding fast and frictionless for travelers.

How we built it

We built a plane classification engine using Gemini API and we linked it with real time data from Open Sky. We used Open Sky to find the data to use for the capturing of planes with taking photos. The app uses email sign-in and a cloud database to track users, plane captures, and points, allowing us to rapidly prototype a secure and scalable experience.

Challenges we ran into

Since we are not in Gatwick Airport and we do not have consistent live data, We had to "imitate" data with plane images from the internet with logos on them. QR codes were also a nasty problem even though there was a model trained to read specific QR codes to allow for validation, it wouldn't correctly read the validated QR codes. This was very problematic for a few hours as it costed us time and slowed us down.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The fact that we came up with this idea within an hour of the hackathon left us plenty of time to build on top of it. Things like building a simple login system, training a model to read qr codes, using AI to capture and record airlines for the "collectible" cards were all great accomplishments in our eyes

What we learned

We learned how to quickly build a secure, real world web application which none us had done before. The project helped us better understand how to design engaging experiences for physical spaces while balancing technical limitations and usability.

What's next for Gatwick GO!

Probably a few features like an AR world to capture more things with the web app like certain items in the airport. Or maybe a long awaited gambling system with loot boxes.

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