SkyFuel

Inspiration

Aviation fuel (Jet A/1 and Avgas) makes up one of the largest operational expenses for pilots, flight schools, and charter fleets. However, fuel prices vary wildly—even between airports that are just a few nautical miles apart. We realized that pilot communities needed a streamlined, real-time solution to compare fuel rates, track historical trends, and find the cheapest refueling spots along their flight routes. With Steal A Planet, our goal was simple: help aviators "steal" back their margins by finding out-of-this-world deals on fuel. What it does

SkyFuel is an interactive aviation fuel price tracker and route planner. It provides:

Interactive Map & Search: Pilots can view airports nationwide or globally to check live fuel prices (Jet-A and 100LL Avgas).

Price Comparisons: Real-time sorting tools to identify the cheapest Fixed-Base Operators (FBOs) and fuel stops near any location or corridor.

Fuel Route Optimizer: Enter your origin, destination, and aircraft range to get recommended refueling stops that save the maximum amount of money.

Community Updates: A crowdsourced feature allowing pilots and airport operators to report, confirm, and update price changes on the fly.

How we built it

Frontend: Built with React and Tailwind CSS for a fast, responsive interface accessible on desktop, tablet, and mobile cockpit setups.

Mapping & Visualization: Integrated Mapbox GL / Leaflet to display custom airport markers colored by price tier.

Backend: Node.js / Express server managing API requests, user submissions, and caching.

Database: PostgreSQL / MongoDB database storing airport coordinates, FBO profile data, and historical pricing logs.

Data Sources: Ingested FAA open data for airport locations and leveraged aviation APIs alongside community reporting pipelines for live fuel metrics.

Challenges we ran into

Data Consistency: Fuel prices update constantly and non-uniformly across thousands of airports. Ensuring data accuracy without displaying stale rates was a tough challenge.

Route Calculation: Calculating fuel-efficient waypoints required balancing geometric flight paths (great-circle distances) against variable fuel costs along the way.

Mobile & In-Cockpit Usability: Designing a UI that remains clean, readable, and functional under varying cockpit lighting conditions and lower mobile bandwidth.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Interactive Route Optimizer: Successfully built an algorithm that recommends optimal fuel stops along a user-defined flight plan.

Clean & Intuitive Interface: Created a map-centric UI that lets users filter by fuel type and price range in just a couple of taps.

Crowdsourcing Pipeline: Designed a fast, seamless price verification flow that lets local pilots update prices instantly.

What we learned

Aviation Logistics: Gained deep insights into FBO operations, fuel types (Jet A vs. 100LL), and how flight planning platforms structure airport metadata.

Spatial Data Management: Mastered geographic spatial indexing (PostGIS/GeoJSON) for high-performance mapping queries.

Optimizing Data Fetching: Implemented effective caching strategies to keep map rendering fast even when displaying thousands of airport nodes.

What's next for Steal A Planet

EFB & Flight App Integrations: Export flight plans and fuel stop waypoints directly into popular Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) software like ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot.

Predictive Pricing Engine: Use historical data and energy market trends to predict fuel price drops or spikes at major hubs.

FBO Loyalty & Portal: Allow FBO managers to claim their profile, offer direct discounts to app users, and verify real-time fuel inventory.

Offline Mode: Enable pilots to download fuel caches for flight corridors prior to takeoff when cellular data isn't available.