Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

We are a social network and online platform for pilots. Members use our Services to find and be found, to connect with other pilots, discover Member events, and find information. Our Privacy Policy applies to any Member or Visitor to our Services.

When you register and join the Connecting Aviators Services, you become a Member.  Our registered Members share their real identities, engage with their network, exchange knowledge and professional insights, post and view relevant content. Content and data on our Services may be viewable to (“Visitors”), but by design intent, our Services are not knowingly or intentionally open to the public or public search engines.

Currently, we only offer our Services to Members that reside in the United States of America and its territories (“USA”).  If you reside outside the USA, you are not authorized to use our Services.

Services

This Privacy Policy applies to your use of our Services.

This Privacy Policy applies to Connecting Aviators® LLC, Connecting Aviators.com, Connecting Aviators-branded apps, and other Connecting Aviators-related sites, apps, communications, goods and services (“Services”).  For California residents, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) requires businesses that receive information from more than fifty thousand California consumers, to provide certain information to them.  Currently, we are below the CCPA reporting requirements.

Data Controllers and Contracting Parties

Connecting Aviators® LLC will be the controller of your personal data provided to, or collected by or for, or processed in connection with, our Services.

As a Member or Visitor of our Services, the collection, use and sharing of your personal data is subject to this Privacy Policy and other documents referenced in this Privacy Policy, as well as updates.

Change

Changes to the Privacy Policy apply to your use of our Services after the “effective date.”

Connecting Aviators®, LLC (“we” or “us”) can modify this Privacy Policy, and if we make material changes to it, we will provide notice through our Services, or by other means, to provide you the opportunity to review the changes before they become effective. If you object to any changes, you may close your account.

You acknowledge that your continued use of our Services after we publish or send a notice about our changes to this Privacy Policy means that the collection, use and sharing of your personal data is subject to the updated Privacy Policy, as of its effective date.

2. Data We Collect

2.1 Data You Provide to Us

Registration

You provide data to create an account with us.

To create an account, you need to provide data including your name, email address and/or mobile number, and a password. If you register for a paid Service, you will need to provide payment (e.g., credit card) and billing information.

Profile

You create your Connecting Aviators profile (a complete profile helps you get the most from our Services).

You have choices about the information on your profile, such as your ratings and endorsements, pilot bio, skills, photo, home airport, city or area, and aircraft you own or rent. You don’t have to provide additional information on your profile; however, profile information helps you to get more from our Services, including helping pilots to find you and relevant Member event notifications. Members who claim to be a pilot but don’t provided adequate information may have their profile moved to a “non-pilot” designation or suspended.  It’s your choice whether to include sensitive information on your profile and to make that sensitive information available to all Members. Please do not post or add personal data to your profile that you would not want to be publicly available.

Posting and Uploading

You give other data to us, such as by posting, invites or feedback.

We collect personal data from you when you provide, post or upload it to our Services, such as when you fill out a form, (e.g., with demographic data or ratings), respond to a survey, or submit a Member event.

You don’t have to post or upload personal data; though if you don’t, it may limit your ability to grow and engage with your network over our Services.

2.2 Data from Others

Content, News and Events

Others may post or write about you.

You and others may post content that includes information about you (as part of posts, comments, pictures) on our Services. We also may collect public information about you, such as professional-related news and accomplishments, and make it available as part of our Services, including, as permitted by your settings, in notifications to others.

Partners

Customers and partners may provide data to us.

Apple provides us analytics on the usage of Connecting Aviators app.  We use this information to improve Services for our Members.

2.3 Service Use

We log your visits and use of our Services.

We log usage data when you visit or otherwise use our Services, including our sites, app and platform technology, such as when you view or click on content or ads, perform a search, install or update one of our mobile apps, share or Like. We use logins, device information and internet protocol (“IP”) addresses to identify you and log your use.

2.4 Your Device and Location

We receive data about you and your device

When you visit or leave our Services, we receive the URL of both the site you came from and the one you go to and the time of your visit. We also get information about your network and device (e.g., IP address, proxy server, operating system, web browser and add-ons, device identifier and features, and/or ISP, or your mobile carrier). If you use our Services from a mobile device, that device will send us data about your location based on your phone settings. We will ask you to opt-in before we use GPS or other tools to identify your precise location.

2.5 Messages

If you communicate through our Services, we learn about that.

We collect information about you when you send, receive, or engage with messages in connection with our Services. For example, if you get a Connecting Aviators connection request, we track whether you have acted on it and may send you reminders. We may also use automatic scanning technology on messages to support and protect our site. For example, we may use this technology to suggest possible responses to messages and to manage or block content that violates our User Agreement or Pilot Community Policies from our Services.

2.6 Sites and Services of Others

We get data when you visit websites or respond to marketing materials that include our ads and QR codes.

We receive information about your visits and interaction with services provided by others when you use QR codes in our ads or similar technologies.

2.7 Other

We are improving our Services, which means we get new data and create new ways to use data.

Our Services are dynamic, and we often introduce new features, which may require the collection of new information. If we collect materially different personal data or materially change how we collect, use or share your data, we will notify you and may also modify this Privacy Policy.

Key Terms

3. How We Use Your Data

We use your data to provide, support, personalize and develop our Services.

How we use your personal data will depend on which Services you use, how you use those Services and the choices you make in your settings. We use the data that we have about you to provide and personalize our Services, including with the help of automated systems and inferences we make, so that our Services (which may include ads) can be more relevant and useful to you and others.

3.1 Services

Our Services help you connect with others, find and be found by Members, stay informed, get training, and be more productive.

We use your data to authorize access to our Services and honor your settings.

Stay Connected

Our Services allow you to stay in touch and up to date with general aviation, colleagues, partners, clients, and other professional contacts. To do so, you can “connect” with the people whom you choose, and who also wish to “connect” with you. Subject to your and their settings, and our Services, when you connect with other Members, you will be able to search each other’s connections in order to exchange professional opportunities.

We use data about you (such as your profile, profiles you have viewed) to help others find your profile, suggest connections for you and others (e.g., Members who share similar contacts or aviation experiences) and enable you to invite others to become a Member and connect with you. You can also opt-in to allow us to use your precise location or proximity to others for certain tasks, subject to Service availability (e.g., to suggest other nearby Members for you to connect with, calculate your distance to a landing facility, or notify your connections that you are at a Member event or landing facility). 

It is your choice whether to invite someone to our Services, send a connection request, or allow another Member to become your connection. When you invite someone to connect with you, your invitation will include your basic profile information (e.g., name, profile photo, type rating, flight hours, region). We will send invitation reminders to the person you invited.  Your required basic information will be associated with your home airport and displayed to other Members when they search (e.g., name, profile photo, type rating, flight hours).

Members have choices about how we use their data.

Stay Informed

Our Services allow you to stay informed about aviation events and topics you care about and from pilots you respect. Our Services also allow you to improve your aviation skills or learn new ones. We use the data we have about you (e.g., data you provide, data we collect from your engagement with our Services and inferences we make from the data we have about you), to personalize our Services for you.

We use your content, activity and other data, including your name and photo, to provide notices to your network and others. For example, subject to your settings, we may notify others that you have updated your profile, posted content, took a social action, used a feature, or made new connections.

Productivity

Our Services allow you to collaborate with aviators, search for potential clients, customers, partners and others to do business with. Our Services allow you to communicate with other Members and schedule and prepare meetings with them.

3.2 Paid Services

Our paid Services help paying users to search for and contact Members through our Services, such as searching for and contacting aviators seeking, starting, or exiting existing airplane co-ownerships, or special event promotions. We may sell paid Services that provide our customers and subscribers with customized-search functionality and tools (including messaging and activity alerts) as part of our Service solutions.

3.3 Communications

We contact you and enable communications between Members.

We will contact you through email, mobile phone, notices posted on our websites or apps, messages to your Connecting Aviators inbox, and other ways through our Services, including text messages and push notifications. We may send you messages about the availability of our Services, security, or other service-related issues. We may also send messages about how to use our Services, network updates, reminders, and promotional messages from us and our partners. You may contact us to request a change to your communication preferences at any time. Please be aware that you cannot opt out of receiving service messages from us, including security and legal notices.

We also enable communications between you and others through our Services, including for example invitations, InMail, and messages between connections.

3.4 Advertising

Currently, we do not have ads on our app Services.  But we may present ads on our app Services in the future.

3.5 Marketing

We promote our Services to you and others.

In addition to advertising our Services, we use Members’ data and content for invitations and communications promoting membership and network growth, engagement and our Services, such as by showing your connections or that you have used a feature on our Services.

3.6 Developing Services and Research

We develop our Services and conduct research

Service Development

We use data, including feedback, to conduct research and development for our Services in order to provide you and others with a better, more intuitive and personalized experience, drive membership growth and engagement on our Services, and help connect aviators to each other and to economic opportunity.

Other Research

We seek to create economic opportunity for Members in aviation, lower flying costs and to help them be more productive and successful. We use the personal data available to us to research social, economic and general aviation trends. In some cases, we may work with trusted third parties to perform this research, under controls that are designed to protect your privacy. We may publish or may allow others to publish our research, for example, economic insights or general aviation trends or “The Value of Shared Aircraft Ownership,” but these reports will be presented as aggregated data rather than personal data.

Surveys

Polls and surveys are conducted by us and others through our Services. You are not obligated to respond to polls or surveys, and you have choices about the information you provide. You may opt-out of survey invitations.

3.7 Customer Support

We use data to help you and fix problems.

We use data (which can include your communications) to investigate, respond to and resolve complaints and for Service issues (e.g., software bugs).

3.8 Insights That Do Not Identify You

We use data to generate insights that do not identify you.

We use your data to produce and share insights that do not identify you. For example, we may use your data to generate statistics, demographics, trends, and insights about Members, or their participation or impressions with our Services.

3.9 Security and Investigations

We use data for security, fraud prevention and investigations.

We use your data (including your communications) for security purposes or to prevent or investigate possible fraud or other violations of our User Agreement and/or attempts to harm our Members, Visitors or others.

4. How We Share Information

4.1 Our Services

Any data that you include on your profile and any content you post or social action (e.g., likes, follows, comments, shares) you take on our Services will be seen by others, consistent with your settings.

Profile

Your required basic profile is fully visible to all Members, and customers of our Services. You can limit profile info displayed beyond the basic required by going to Menu > Settings. As detailed in our User Guide, your settings, degree of connection with the viewing Members, the subscriptions they may have, their usage of our Services, access channels and search types (e.g., by name or by keyword) impact the availability of your profile and whether they can view certain fields in your profile.

Posts, Likes, Follows, Comments, Messages

Our Services allow viewing and sharing of information including through posts, likes, follows and comments.

• When you share a post (e.g., an update, image, comment) it can be viewed by Members and re-shared. Members will be able to find and see your shared content, including your name (and photo if you have provided one).
• When you select “Airports I Follow or Pilots I Follow,” you are visible to others as a follower.
• We let senders know when you act on their message, subject to your settings where applicable.
• Subject to your available and applicable settings, we let a Member know when you view their profile.
• When you like or re-share or comment on another’s content (including ads), others will be able to view these “social actions” and associate it with you (e.g., your name, profile and photo if you provided it).

4.2 Service Providers

We may use others to help us with our Services.

We use others to help us provide our Services (e.g., maintenance, analysis, audit, payments, fraud detection, marketing and development). They will have access to your information as reasonably necessary to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated not to disclose or use it for other purposes.

4.3 Legal Disclosures

We may need to share your data when we believe it’s required by law or to help protect the rights and safety of you, us or others.

It is possible that we will need to disclose information about you when required by law, subpoena, or other legal process or if we have a good faith belief that disclosure is reasonably necessary to (1) investigate, prevent or take action regarding suspected or actual illegal activities or to assist government enforcement agencies; (2) enforce our agreements with you; (3) investigate and defend ourselves against any third-party claims or allegations; (4) protect the security or integrity of our Services (such as by sharing with companies facing similar threats); or (5) exercise or protect the rights and safety of Connecting Aviators, our Members, personnel or others. We attempt to notify Members about legal demands for their personal data when appropriate in our judgment, unless prohibited by law or court order or when the request is an emergency. We may dispute such demands when we believe, in our discretion, that the requests are overbroad, vague or lack proper authority, but we do not promise to challenge every demand.

4.4 Change in Control or Sale

We may share your data when our business is sold to others, but it must continue to be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

We can also share your personal data as part of a sale, merger or change in control, or in preparation for any of these events. Any other entity which buys us, or part of our business will have the right to continue to use your data, but only in the manner set out in this Privacy Policy unless you agree otherwise.

5. Your Choices & Obligations

5.1 Data Retention

We keep most of your personal data for as long as your account is open.

We generally retain your personal data as long as you keep your account open or as needed to provide you Services. This includes data you or others provided to us and data generated or inferred from your use of our Services. Even if you only use our Services every few years, we will retain your information and keep your profile open, unless you close your account. In some cases, we choose to retain certain information (e.g., insights about Services use) in a depersonalized or aggregated form.

5.2 Rights to Access and Control Your Personal Data

You can access or delete your personal data. You have many choices about how your data is collected, used and shared.

We provide many choices about the collection, use and sharing of your data, from deleting or correcting data you include in your profile and controlling the visibility of your posts to advertising opt-outs and communication controls. We offer you settings to control and manage the personal data we have about you.

For personal data that we have about you, you can:

• Delete Data: You can ask us to erase or delete all or some of your personal data (e.g., if it is no longer necessary to provide Services to you).
• Change or Correct Data: You can edit some of your personal data through your account. You can also ask us to change, update or fix your data in certain cases, particularly if it’s inaccurate.
• Object to, or Limit or Restrict, Use of Data: You can ask us to stop using all or some of your personal data (e.g., if we have no legal right to keep using it) or to limit our use of it (e.g., if your personal data is inaccurate or unlawfully held).
• Right to Access and/or Take Your Data: You can ask us for a copy of your personal data and can ask for a copy of personal data you provided in machine readable form.

You may contact us using the contact information below, and we will consider your request in accordance with applicable laws.

5.3 Account Closure

We keep some of your data even after you close your account.

If you choose to close your Connecting Aviators account, your personal data will generally stop being visible to others on our Services within 24 hours. We generally delete closed account information within 30 days of account closure, except as noted below.

We retain your personal data even after you have closed your account if reasonably necessary to comply with our legal obligations (including law enforcement requests), meet regulatory requirements, resolve disputes, maintain security, prevent fraud and abuse (e.g., if we have restricted your account for breach of our Pilot Community Policies), enforce our User Agreement, or fulfill your request to “unsubscribe” from further messages from us. We will retain de-personalized information after your account has been closed.

Information you have shared with others (e.g., through Message, updates or posts) will remain visible after you close your account or delete the information from your own profile, and we do not control data that other Members have copied out of our Services.

6. Other Important Information

6.1. Security

We monitor for and try to prevent security breaches. Please use the security features available through our Services.

We implement security safeguards designed to protect your data, such as HTTPS. We regularly monitor our systems for possible vulnerabilities and attacks. However, we cannot warrant the security of any information that you send us. There is no guarantee that data may not be accessed, disclosed, altered, or destroyed by breach of any of our physical, technical, or managerial safeguards.

6.2 Lawful Bases for Processing

We have lawful bases to collect, use and share data about you. You have choices about our use of your data. At any time, you can withdraw consent you have provided by going to your account settings or by contacting our Data Protection Officer.

We will only collect and process personal data about you where we have lawful bases. Lawful bases include consent (where you have given consent), contract (where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you (e.g., to deliver the Connecting Aviators Services you have requested) and “legitimate interests.”

Where we rely on your consent to process personal data, you have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time and where we rely on legitimate interests, you have the right to object.  If you have any questions about the lawful bases upon which we collect and use your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer.

6.5. Contact Information

You can Contact Us or use other options to resolve any complaints.

If you have questions or complaints regarding this Policy, please first contact Connecting Aviators online through support@connectingaviators.com or by telephone. You can also reach us by physical mail. To access our contact information, click the link below “Contact Us.”  If contacting us does not resolve your complaint, you have more options.