AirData Now Syncs Pilot Institute Certificates Into Pilot Profiles, Free Tier Included, as Part 108 Recordkeeping Nears

Drone fleet software has been logging flights automatically for years. Proving that the person at the controls was trained for the job has mostly been a manual task: someone uploads a PDF certificate to a shared drive and hopes it is still there when an auditor or client asks for it. AirData UAV wants to automate that part too.

On Nov. 4, AirData and Pilot Institute announced an integration that syncs completed Pilot Institute courses, certificates and the skills attached to them straight into AirData pilot profiles. According to DroneXL, the feature works on every AirData plan, including the free tier. Pilots turn it on under My Account > Pilot Institute.

What the integration actually does

AirData's announcement lists four functions:

Automatic import. Certificates come directly from Pilot Institute, so pilots do not have to upload them by hand.
Backfill. Previously earned certificates appear as badges in the pilot's profile alongside newly completed ones, so a pilot's earlier training is not lost when they connect.
Fleet visibility. Fleet administrators can see which courses each pilot has completed and which are still in progress.
Expiration reminders. Pilots and administrators receive reminders about upcoming certificate expirations.

The skills piece matters as much as the certificates. AirData says it imports the skills tied to each course, not just a record that the course was finished, and says those skills help administrators understand pilot capabilities when assigning missions. In principle, that lets a fleet manager search the roster by capability instead of reading through certificate titles.

"We've automated flight record syncing for years, and we see the same need with pilot certifications," AirData CEO Eran Steiner said in the announcement. Greg Reverdiau, Pilot Institute's co-founder and head of training, was also quoted in the release.

The scale behind it

AirData calls itself the system of record for enterprise drone operations in the version of the release distributed on EIN Presswire. The same release describes Pilot Institute as the largest drone training school in the United States. Both claims come from the companies themselves.

DroneXL reports that AirData now cites more than 68 million flights logged by more than 470,000 pilots, up from the 65 million flights it reported on Aug. 25. AirData's supported-credentials page lists the training providers whose certificates it detects and tracks automatically, and Pilot Institute is among them. The page cites 883 certificate types recognized. On the training side, Pilot Institute says it has trained more than 150,000 Part 107 students.

Those numbers suggest the integration's value is mostly about reach. Both companies describe themselves as operating at large scale, and linking the two removes a step from a workflow that many operators may already run.

Why It Matters

The Nov. 4 announcement does not mention it, but the timing fits a regulatory deadline. DroneXL notes that the FAA's August 2025 proposal for Part 108, the long-awaited rule for routine beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations, includes a recordkeeping provision. Proposed section 108.40(e) lists six items that operators would have to keep in their training records, including the completion date, the provider's name and address, and a certificate copy.

According to DroneXL, the final rule has been under White House review since July 10 and is required by Dec. 7. If the recordkeeping language survives into the final rule largely as proposed, operators flying under Part 108 would need documented training histories for their pilots. The question is whether those records sit in filing cabinets and spreadsheets or are generated as a byproduct of software operators already use.

That is where the free-tier detail stands out. DroneXL points out that Pilot Institute's October 2025 comment on the proposal said the rule's reporting and recordkeeping duties could favor large companies over smaller ones. DroneXL's own take is that automatic certificate tracking on a free plan helps small operators. It does not settle the concern, though. An imported badge is not the same as a compliant training record. Until the final text is published, nobody outside the rulemaking process knows exactly what Part 108 will require.

There are other limits worth noting. The integration covers one training provider's credentials flowing into one logbook platform. Pilots trained elsewhere depend on whether their provider appears on AirData's supported-credentials list. Operators that use other fleet-management software get nothing from this particular link. Keeping training records in one vendor's platform also raises a familiar question about vendor concentration as compliance data piles up in one place.

A note on sourcing

Most of what is known about this integration comes from the companies. The AirData blog post and the EIN Presswire release are the same company announcement. The supported-credentials page is also on AirData's own site. The only independent coverage we reviewed is DroneXL, which added the Part 108 context and the updated usage figures and disclosed that Pilot Institute is a DroneXL partner. The figures above, including flight counts, pilot counts, certificate types and student totals, are company-reported and have not been independently verified.

The bottom line

For a pilot who already holds Pilot Institute certificates and logs flights in AirData, this is a small, welcome convenience: training history shows up where flight history already lives, at no cost. For fleet managers, completion tracking and expiry reminders replace a chore that is often done badly. For the industry, the integration is an early example of how vendors might handle the paperwork side of BVLOS if Part 108's recordkeeping provisions take effect, with training records collected automatically by software rather than filed by hand.