Instead of hiring a team internally, fund a national competition — aerospace engineering departments compete to design the SkyPark aircraft. $50K prize pool. Real IP. Probably the cleverest path to the same outcome.
Modeled on the Ansari X-Prize and DARPA Grand Challenges — structured competition unlocks capabilities that a funded team might take twice as long to find.
FlyIRL publishes detailed specs: the SkyPark aircraft requirements, safety standards, performance envelope, certifiability constraints. The brief is the product of existing internal R&D.
Aerospace engineering departments at universities across the US (and allied nations) register teams. Student-professor collaborations. Real engineering, real stakes, real motivation — a national prize, plus a path to production.
Teams produce a certifiable design: CAD, structural analysis, safety systems architecture, propulsion selection, FAA Part 23 compliance roadmap. Quarterly check-ins, public updates, backer access to progress.
Finalists present to a panel of aerospace engineers, FAA-adjacent advisors, and industry judges. Backers at the Judging Panel tier attend live. Winner gets the prize. FlyIRL gets the design.
Winning team co-owns the IP. FlyIRL holds a perpetual license for commercial production. The design is published. This is a feature, not a bug: open IP accelerates the entire eVTOL ecosystem, not just us.
A validated, certifiable design in hand changes everything about the follow-on funding conversation. VCs, strategic partners, SBIR grants — all of it becomes dramatically more accessible.
This is not a consolation prize. Some of the most innovative aerospace work of the last 20 years came out of exactly this kind of structure.
Students and professors competing for a national prize, a production path, and career-defining credit work with a focus that salaried engineers rarely match.
MIT, Georgia Tech, Embry-Riddle, Cal Poly, UT Austin, University of Michigan. These programs produce the engineers who go on to build Joby, Archer, Wisk, and Overair.
Multiple competing teams means multiple design approaches explored simultaneously. The winning solution emerges from actual competition, not committee consensus.
FlyIRL is a business — an experience, an operations platform, a brand. Sharing the aircraft design accelerates the ecosystem and positions FlyIRL as the organization that made it happen.
$50K is a tiny number for what it could unlock. Most of it goes directly to the prize pool — the rest administers a real competition.
On the IP tradeoff: The winning team co-owns the design. FlyIRL holds a perpetual commercial production license. Yes, we share IP — but FlyIRL is a business, not a product. Whatever gets a certifiable aircraft design into our hands faster is the right call.
You’re funding a national aerospace competition — and getting a front row seat to one of the more interesting engineering stories in general aviation.
You believe students and professors can solve this. Your name goes into the prize materials and you get updates as competing teams progress.
Adopt a university team and follow their journey directly. Get updates from the team, access to their design blog, and a shoutout at Demo Day.
Sponsor a specific judging category — Safety Systems, Propulsion Architecture, Guest Experience Design, or FAA Certification Pathway. Your name goes on the category. You help define the judging criteria for it.
Attend Demo Day — in person or virtual — as an observer to the judging panel. See the finalist presentations and the deliberation process firsthand.
Your name or company featured prominently across all competition materials, the Demo Day event, and the final published design. The kind of aerospace community visibility money normally can’t buy.
Name the prize. The competition becomes “The [Your Name] FlyIRL Aircraft Design Prize.” Your name is on this permanently — in the competition, the design, and whatever gets built from it.
This one isn’t live yet. Your signal is what makes it happen.Already on the list? That’s fine — you won’t be added twice ;)