Aviation’s AI Moment Has Arrived. 

Let’s Build It the Right Way.

For fifteen years, Springshot has worked with airlines, airports and frontline teams to improve aviation operations. We are proud of the work we did with Spirit Airlines, a carrier that always challenged convention and experimented with new technology.

Today, the technology community is beginning to see what we have seen for years: aviation operations represent an extraordinary opportunity for artificial intelligence.

Operations have become more observable. Frontline workers are digitally connected and working side-by-side with autonomous machines. Previously disconnected systems exchange information in real time. AI models can understand operational conditions, make decisions and validate outcomes on demand. And, critically, real-world execution can be captured as reliable high-fidelity data.

For the first time, the conditions are present for AI to help orchestrate aviation operations.

The opportunity is enormous: improved passenger and employee safety, more predictable flight schedules, lower operating costs and ensuring air travel remains accessible to people across all income levels.

We believe that's why Google’s $10 million bid to buy Spirit’s operational data for product development and AI training purposes has attracted so much attention.

We agree with the thesis: real operational data is required to train reliable operational AI.

Our work with Spirit proved that models trained on real-world data can be brought into the flow of work to validate and enhance execution in real time.

This data does not simply exist in nature waiting to be collected. It is created through a complex ecosystem of real-time signals, integrated systems, operational workflows and proprietary technologies that transform activity into structured operational context, an ecosystem built and refined over many years.

That is an important lesson. The value lies not only in the software and systems that generate the data, but also in the proprietary structure, context and accumulated operational history those systems produce. Together, they represent the foundation for training and validating the next generation of aviation AI.

A $10 million bid for Spirit’s digital operating history is powerful market validation of that idea. That value should be realized through a process that ensures Spirit transfers only the assets that it owns.

Our position is straightforward. Technology partners like Springshot, webAI, Assaia, Synaptic, Materna and Reunitus have invested years building the intellectual property that powers modern airline operations. Spirit should be free to sell what Spirit owns. It should not be permitted to sell intellectual property that belongs to its partners simply because that property was deployed within the airline.

Where Springshot-owned intellectual property rights are implicated, we will protect them.

But we view the larger moment with excitement.

Google’s recently announced five-year partnership with Ryanair—including the use of Gemini and DeepMind technologies to support operational decision-making—is another indication that the world’s most capable technology companies are turning their attention toward aviation operations.

There is much work ahead. Some of it will be done in partnership. Some in competition. All of it should be done in a way that accelerates innovation in an industry that affects billions of people and remains foundational to the global economy.

Springshot has spent fifteen years doing the difficult, often unglamorous work of connecting operational systems, structuring real-world execution and bringing technology to the frontline.

The world is arriving at the moment we have anticipated.

We stand ready.

Doug Kreuzkamp
Founder & CEO