Building Open Aviation Solutions

Jun 19, 2026 2 min read Aviation, Programming, Open-Source

For the past couple of years while working towards my pilot licence, I’ve looked for interesting ways to use my open source software engineering experience in an aviation context.

More recently I’ve founded Open Aviation Solutions - a software development company building a collection of aviation-specific Open Source projects to simplify aviation software development.

Two of the initial projects are ones that I could start building immediately with immediate benefit to me while doing my flight training. But hopefully also beneficial for other pilots working towards their instructor rating or otherwise needing to present related aviation concepts. You can read about each project at:

  • Open Aviation Components - interactive learning components that bring otherwise static training diagrams to life, embeddable in any website or web-based briefing or slide deck; and utilising the components in:
  • Open Aviation Briefings - a shared set of Australian Recreational Pilot Licence briefing presentations that instructors and schools can use for free and adapt to their own needs.

In a way, these two projects are two small examples for the aviation community showing how Open Source licensing could benefit both the community and the wider industry. And they help lead in to the main purpose of Open Aviation Solutions as an aviation-specific software development company, which is where the third and main project comes in:

Almost every piece of aviation software - from digital logbooks, currency trackers through to flight planners - is built with similar models sharing some common behaviour underneath. One experiment I’m running at the moment is to build a set of aviation-specific open-source libraries to provide those building blocks, with a standards-based core (using ICAO’s international vocabulary) and country-specific layers on top, starting with an Australian one built on CASA’s regulations.

If the experiment works, the benefit will be that anyone building an aviation product can start from correct, regulation-aware foundations and spend their effort on what makes their app different. For now they’re still in development - I want to show some examples of what I can do with them first - but when they’re ready they’ll be free and open-source. You can read more on the Open Aviation Software page or more about Open Aviation Solutions itself.

In the mean-time, I’m always interested to talk about aviation-related software opportunities.

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