SocialFlight, the free general aviation events website and mobile app, is celebrating its two-year anniversary at EAA AirVenture 2014. Users of the SocialFlight app and website, now numbering nearly 30,000, can add any aviation-related event to the site and view all the events in their local areas. A new feature in SocialFlight 4.0 is the addition of “things to do” at nearby airports in the U.S. and Canada.
A recent example of the new feature, according to SocialFlight founder Jeff Simon, involved a pilot who used the app to fly to Cleveland’s Burke-Lakefront Airport and then walk a short distance to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum. “That’s a trip [you can make] flying a general aviation airplane that [might not] have happened otherwise,” he said. “We’re about getting people to fly more, increasing the health of the industry and energizing general aviation.”
SocialFlight introduced another new feature: the SocialFlight Parade of Planes, which for 2014 takes place in September. This feature alerts SocialFlight users when manufacturers’ airplanes are in their local areas for demonstration flights and visits. Potential buyers normally travel to airshows and other events to see such aircraft, but SocialFlight’s Parade of Planes makes it convenient to see the aircraft when they are nearby.
The manufacturers’ demonstration aircraft can be seen during the year at venues other than at airshow-related events, Simon stressed. “These manufacturers are partnering with SocialFlight to reveal where they are during the month of September [this year], with opportunities [for potential buyers] to go to local airports to see the aircraft when the manufacturers are making sales calls or fuel stops, to talk to the sales person and to connect.”
The Parade of Planes is open to anyone who wants to see the aircraft and any manufacturer that would like to participate, free of charge, Simon said.
What stimulated the idea for the Parade of Planes was Cessna’s Discover Flying Challenge, where young pilots fly new Cessna 172s around the U.S. each summer to engage with young people and generate interest in flying. “Last year’s Challenge was run in partnership with SocialFlight,” Simon explained. “We mapped it so people could follow them, and it was the genesis for the idea that the stop of [one of these] aircraft can be an event.”
The SocialFlight system is having an “impressive effect,” according to Simon. A survey of event-givers following their events that were publicized on SocialFlight found that 25 percent of attendees showed up because they saw the event on SocialFlight. “Even if the impact is half of that,” he said, “that’s 12 percent more at no cost for the people putting on the event.”
