Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy ("Policy") explains how Skyfarer Academy ("we," "us," "our"), an online platform for aviation education, collects, uses, and manages your personal information. This document outlines our practices, including the types of information we collect, how we use it, and your rights regarding your data.

This Policy applies to all information processed by Skyfarer Academy, including data provided by organizations we collaborate with, such as aviation flight schools, non-profit organizations, or employers. Please note that while we can inform you about our data processing practices, we cannot control how third-party organizations handle your personal information unless they are our service providers acting under our instructions. If you enroll in a session offered by another organization through our platform, that organization's privacy policy will apply, and you should consult them directly regarding their data practices.

Additionally, our website and applications may include links to external sites not controlled by us. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of these external sites. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of any sites you visit.

We may update this Policy periodically and will indicate the date of the last revision. If significant changes are made, we will notify you and, if required by law, obtain your consent.

If you have any questions about this Policy, please contact us at support@skyfareracademy.com.

Key Terms

• Customers: Includes Learners, Instructors, and Partners.
  • Learners: Individuals, typically students, who engage with Skyfarer Academy’s services.
  • Instructors: Independent contractors or organizations that offer courses or training through Skyfarer Academy.
  • Partners: Third-party entities such as schools, aviation organizations, technology vendors, or employers that collaborate with us.
• Services: Refers to all educational and training activities provided through Skyfarer Academy.
  • Sessions means the lessons and courses developed / taught by Instructors, whether individuals or organizations.
  • Activities means the groups, challenges, and other types of engagement through or with Skyfarer Academy in which any Customers may participate, whether paid or free
• Personal Information/Data: Any information linked to an identified or identifiable individual.
• Processing: Any action performed on personal data, such as collecting, using, sharing, or storing.

Your Personal Information

Website Visitors and General Consumers (anyone) We collect information from website visitors through technological means, such as cookies and trackers, to enhance the user experience. If you interact with us directly, such as by filling out a contact form, we will collect and use your information to respond to your inquiries and for marketing purposes. You can opt out of marketing communications at any time.

Communication When you communicate with us, regardless of the channel, we keep records of communications and act on them as appropriate, whether email, messaging, or other forms of communication. Communications may be managed by various departments and/or third parties, including Trust & Safety or Legal. We may also communicate with you to better understand our market, and ask you to participate in study groups, surveys, video interviews, etc. We will provide more information to you at the time.

Social Media We may interact with you using social media in a variety of ways. We may “follow” you or ask you to “follow” us. We may create groups on social media for interaction. We may ask for your social media handles or tags to use in advertising. We may copy your posts or statements and follow up internally or with you.

Marketing We will use your contact information for marketing purposes unless you instruct us otherwise. We may also obtain information from third-party sources to enhance our marketing efforts. You have the option to opt out of marketing communications, and we will continue to send essential emails related to your account and services. Please contact support@skyfareracademy for questions.

Information from Customers (Instructors, Learners, and Partners) We process personal information provided directly by you, information obtained from third parties, and data collected through cookies and trackers. Below is a summary of the different types of information we collect and how we process them.

1. Information You Provide to Us: For engaging with us, you provide us information directly for your Account, Services, and Finance. More detail is provided below for each one of these, but here we explain how and why we process this information.

• How do we collect this information? If you engage with us directly, we collect this information from you or from linked accounts (like Google or Facebook log-ins) that you choose to share the data with us. You also volunteer information when you complete parts of your profile. You can choose not to provide this information. If you come to us through a partner, some of the data comes from them, but some is provided by you when you complete the registration. If you are a Learner, your Parent may provide your information. When engaged with sessions or activities, participants may be requested to submit some information to complete the assignment and some information is volunteered through your engagement, like comments or feedback.
• Why do we collect this information? We collect this data to add you to our platform and let you engage with us - generally at your request or consent, which you may revoke at any time. Revoking consent may end your sessions, activities, or account, depending on your request. If you refuse to provide a video, you may be refused to join Activities. You can participate without providing any voluntary information, but you must provide required information. We may also use information provided to us to prevent fraud. In general, we use your information to provide the Services, customer support, and to improve our platform and Services.

1.1 Account Information: When you create an account with Skyfarer Academy, we collect your name, email address, phone number, and other relevant details. You can also provide additional profile information, such as your age, gender, and profile photo. This information is used to personalize your experience and improve our services.

1.2 Service: We collect information about the services you use, such as sessions or training sessions, and your interactions with instructors or other participants. This may include uploaded content, such as photos or comments, which may contain metadata. We do not support communication outside our platform unless specifically required for a course.

1.3 Financial Information: For payments and purchases, we collect your payment details, billing address, and information about the services you have purchased. This information is used to process transactions and detect fraud.

1.4 Sensitive Data: “Sensitive data” has different meanings depending on location. Where possible, we apply heightened protection to sensitive data. In some places, information from a child may be considered sensitive information itself. You or a Learner may voluntarily provide sensitive information, such as health or disability information included in forms, messages, or with a complaint or concern. Learners may also be enrolled in special sessions offered for Learners with disabilities and Instructors may volunteer their disabilities within a class. Instructors and Learners are otherwise not allowed to have discussions that may elicit or result in sharing of sensitive information, and where they do learn sensitive information, they are not permitted to share that outside Skyfarer Academy or use it in an inappropriate way.

• Identity Check Information: Instructors and potential employees must provide information as part of our identity check process, such as birth certificate, passport, or driver's license. This documentation may contain sensitive data such as full date of birth, place of birth, and government ID numbers.

2. Information from Third Parties: We may receive information about you from partners, vendors, or other third parties. This information is used to enhance our services and support our business operations. If you engage with us through a third-party platform, their privacy policy will apply to the data shared with us.

• How? We get information from third parties either by purchasing or leasing it, indirectly through our own vendors, or by engaging with you through third parties, like social media (see Social Media above). Also, our current Customers may share information in our referral program. We do not buy or lease information from third parties on Learners.
• Why? In most cases, we obtain or purchase data so we can grow our business - so this is in our legitimate interests as a business to do so. We may use this data to report suspicious activity to a local agency. If so, this is either for addressing fraud or for the safety of Learners.

2.1 Information from Partners: Skyfarer Academy may partner with other organizations, such as flight schools, non-profits, and employers to provide services. In general, these Partners would provide your information to us for you to participate in Sessions or Activities in which they have control (such as flight schools) or where they are offering the Services to you as a joint effort. Partners will likely provide you with specific information when the relationship is set up, especially if they have control over the Sessions or Activities. If so, you need to look at their privacy notice for how they handle your information.

We may also partner with technology companies to jointly provide some services. In some cases, you need to create an account with the partner to use their services and when you link your account there with your account with us, they may provide information to us.

2.2 Information from Vendors: At times, we may purchase (or lease) data from third parties for certain reasons. We don’t know how these third parties get your data, but it is generally through advertising services or other companies you have used who are able to share your information. We do not sell that information, but we may share it with our vendors, such as if we buy a mailing list of parents in a certain area, we will share those addresses with a vendor who may print and mail the postcards. The data we get may be just on a group of people where we provide characteristics we want or we may provide the names (not on Learners) to get more information on them, such as addresses for marketing materials or for reporting an event to the local agencies.

2.3 Information from other third parties: At times, you may choose to log in to our services using a linked account, such as Google. While we enable this for your convenience, it means we may receive additional information about you from those services. We encourage you to review the privacy policies of these third-party providers to understand what information they share with us. We only use the information shared by these providers to improve the functionality and user experience of our platform and do not use or transfer it for any other purposes.

Google Meet and Google Calendar Integration: We take your privacy seriously and are committed to protecting your personal information. Our platform integrates with Google Meet and Google Calendar to provide a seamless and secure experience for scheduling and managing virtual meetings. This integration allows Google Account users to create, update, and delete meetings directly through our platform, with meeting links managed via their Google Calendar.

Importantly, we only use the Google Calendar API to enhance functionality related to meeting scheduling and management. We do not share or transfer Google user data to any third parties for purposes other than improving or delivering this functionality. For more details on how Google ensures the secure sharing of user data, please refer to this Google Support Article.

Our Google Meet integration is designed to enhance your productivity and streamline communication, while adhering to strict data security practices.

3. Information we get through Technology: Some data we get through technology, such as cookies and trackers on the website. We do not knowingly track children. More detail is provided below for each one of these, but here we explain how and why we process this information.

• How do we collect this information? This data is collected through technology. This means simply by coming to our website or using our app, you are providing certain information automatically. Some of this you can opt out through your computer or browser settings, but others are necessary.

• Why do we collect this information? More details are below, but some data is necessary for the operations of the website and app and some are optional. Optional reasons include analytics, preferences as discussed above about testing certain features or preferences on our site, assessing user behavior and tech problems, along with other useful information. Unless it is necessary for the website or app to work, our reasons are linked to our legitimate interests in having this information that we do not believe impact your rights and freedoms. This information also helps us personalize your experience with us. It also helps us detect, investigate fraud and violations of our policies.

Technical, Device, and Usage Data: This is information that we automatically collect about your device and connection when you engage with Skyfarer Academy and it includes your IP address, device identifiers such as cookie identifiers and mobile device identifiers, operating system type, and the type of browser. This may include data about your usage (such as login times, search terms , items you click on, error messages, and pages you viewed) and location data. We do not collect data from third-party ad trackers on Learners.

4. Inferred and Combined Data: We provided information on how and why we collect and process your information and provided a lot of information about the sources of information and the purposes for which we use your information. However, you need to know that using your information is not always so straightforward, we infer information about you and we combine data to have a more complete understanding of you.

Inferred Data: We may infer new information from other data we collect to generate information about your likely interests. For example, we infer the session subjects you may be interested in from searches you may perform. We may also infer your general geographic location (such as city, state, and country) based on your IP address.

Combined Data: We may obtain information from you from sources other than you, such as through partners, employers, third parties, or social media. For example, you may have accounts through your flight school or employer, and also directly. Where possible, we combine these sources to have one extensive view of individuals engaged with Skyfarer Academy.

As we explained in the sections above, we may use any of the above categories of your personal data to:

• Provide services to Customers, Partners, third parties, and employees;
• Perform our business operations;
• Manage our relationship with Teachers, Parents, and other individuals.

Sharing Your Data

We may share your personal information with the following entities:

• Instructors: When students sign up for services through Skyfarer Academy, the instructors may receive certain personal information about the students. This information could include details about the sessions they have taken, their requests, and any specific needs they have mentioned. It’s important to note that instructors on our platform are independent and are not employees or agents of Skyfarer Academy. However, they are required to adhere to our guidelines regarding the use of personal data. In cases where sessions are taught by a team or organization, recordings of these sessions might be accessible to multiple individuals within that group, not just a single instructor. Additionally, instructors may involve other qualified individuals to assist them.
• Other Users: Participants in a session or activity can interact with other members, including instructors, learners/students, and any other necessary personnel like interpreters. This interaction includes the ability to see, hear, and read communications within the group. However, Skyfarer Academy prohibits any unauthorized individuals from participating in or accessing these interactions unless explicitly approved for legitimate purposes.
• Instructors Using Third-Party Tools: We encourage our instructors to use only those third-party tools and websites that comply with privacy standards. At times, instructors might prefer tools that have not been reviewed by our team. Parents should carefully review the tools and sites recommended by instructors for specific classes. If there are concerns, you can either agree, notify the instructor, or contact us. When you consent to our privacy notice, you are also agreeing to the use of pre-approved third-party tools. We maintain an updated list of these tools and regularly review their compliance. Should you choose to opt out of using any specific tools, it might affect the class experience, but you are not obligated to use them if you disagree.
• Partners: When we collaborate with other organizations, such as flight schools, employers, non-profits, or tech companies, we may share information about learners engagement with these partners. This often happens when these partners provide opportunities or funding for services. You will be aware of such engagements as these typically involve specific codes, vouchers, or connections you use to access services.
• Service Providers and Vendors: Skyfarer Academy works with third-party service providers to handle certain aspects of our operations, such as hosting, communications, marketing, analytics, payment processing (Stripe), video hosting (Google Meet), and website maintenance. This list represents examples and is not exhaustive.
• Business Transactions: If Skyfarer Academy is involved in a merger, acquisition, restructuring, bankruptcy, or similar transaction, your personal data may be transferred as part of the assets involved in that transaction. This may occur before the transaction is complete as part of the transition or evaluation, although where possible, we will ensure the other entity honors the privacy protections.
• Legal Requirements: We may disclose your personal data if required to do so by law or when we believe that such action is necessary to (i) comply with a legal obligation or a request from someone with legal authority to do so, (ii) protect and defend the rights or property of us or those of Customers or Partners, (iii) operate and maintain appropriate security, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks, or (iv) to protect the personal safety of Customers or the public. Instructors and Partners may also be required to report suspected abuse or neglect to local authorities, and we expect all Instructors and Partners to comply with their individual reporting responsibilities. We may also report instances of suspected abuse or neglect.
• Third-Party Analytics and Advertising: We allow third-party analytics and advertising vendors to collect personal information, including the Technical Data described above, data about your usage, and inferences about you based on such data. Except for data collected from Learners in Learner Space, these third-party vendors may combine this data across multiple sites to improve analytics for their own purpose and others. However, we do not sell your data for money.
• Information You Share: You may choose to share your information with third parties or the public. This includes messaging other users, uploading data to your profile, participating in discussions, or engaging in social media. We expect all users to respect each other's privacy and adhere to our guidelines on sharing and disclosing information. Please also see our Terms of Service.

Please note that sessions and activities might include links to or recommendations for third-party sites with privacy practices that differ from ours. Instructors may also suggest third-party resources for Learners. If you provide personal data to any of those third parties, or instruct us to disclose personal data to them, that data is governed by their privacy notices.

Where In The World Is Your Data?

We are located in the United States. Our service providers are located and process personal data in various countries, primarily the United States and Canada (these are where most of our Instructors are from). Our third-party analytics and advertising vendors are located in the same countries, but may also include local vendors for Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, and United Kingdom. This may not be a complete list and not all personal information may go to each country listed. Please contact us if you would like more information.

If transferring your data outside your country requires your consent or other transfer process, we intend to follow the requirements. In most cases, our legal reason for processing your information is to complete a contract with you, generally to provide the Services you have engaged in with us, whether free or paid or to allow you to provide Services on our platform. Please let us know if you have any questions. Contact Us.

Your Rights and How to Manage or Delete Your Personal Information

Where permitted under applicable law, you have the right to request access to your Personal Information, delete, change or correct your Personal Information collected by Skyfarer Academy. If you are an Instructor, or a Partner you can access and update the information associated with your Skyfarer Academy account directly by logging into your Skyfarer Academy account and viewing the Account Settings tab on your profile.

To exercise your rights mentioned above, please contact us at support@skyfareracademy.com. Once your account is deleted, you will not be able to reinstate your activity, session, or other history, including interactions with instructors or payment. Please note that as part of your request, we may require additional information and documents, including Personal Information, in order to authenticate and validate your identity and to process your request. Such additional information will be then retained by us for legal purposes (i.e., as proof of the identity of the person submitting the request).

Contact Us

Please contact us if you have any comments or questions about this Notice or our information processing practices by emailing "support@skyfareracademy.com".

Keeping And Securing Your Data

We take steps intended to protect the personal data that we collect from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. However, the Internet cannot be guaranteed to be fully secure, and we cannot ensure the security of any content or information you provide to us. You are also responsible for helping to protect the security of your account credentials. For instance, never give out your password, and make sure to safeguard your username, password, and personal credentials used to access Skyfarer Academy, so that other people will not have access to your personal data. Please do not use the username and password you use with us with any other services.

We retain the information we collect for the duration of the services with you. For Learners, this is generally one year past the time you cease interacting with us, or at your request. For Instructors, local law may dictate certain retention periods for payment purposes.