Privacy Policy

SwarmATC is operated by Inn4U (“we”, “us”), the responsible party (data controller) under the South African Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA). SwarmATC is a drone flight-plan management system connecting remote pilots with air traffic control (ATC) towers in South Africa, Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries.

For any privacy question, or to exercise your rights, contact our Information Officer at [email protected].

We collect only what is needed to submit and manage drone operations safely:

• Account data — your name, email address, phone number, and pilot / RPA registration details you provide at sign-up.
• Flight-plan data — operation area, altitude, timing, drone type and purpose you enter when submitting a plan.
• Precise location — while a flight is active, the app sends your drone’s position (telemetry, up to once per second) so ATC and the conformance system have live situational awareness. Location is not collected when no flight is active.
• Device data — a Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) push token and basic device/platform information, used only to deliver notifications.

We process your data to perform the service you request and to comply with civil aviation obligations. Under POPIA our lawful bases are the performance of the service (contract), your consent (e.g. location and push notifications, which you can withdraw), and compliance with the law (aviation safety and regulatory reporting).

The core purpose of SwarmATC is to share your flight information with the relevant air traffic control towers and civil aviation authorities (e.g. SACAA, CAAZ) so your operation can be approved and de-conflicted. We also use a small number of processors strictly to run the service:

• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging — to deliver push notifications to your device.
• Africa’s Talking — to deliver SMS notifications where used.

We do not sell your personal information or use it for advertising.

Personal information of South African pilots is stored in South Africa (Amazon Web Services, af-south-1, Cape Town) in line with POPIA data-residency expectations. Data for other countries is held in the applicable regional infrastructure.

We retain flight-plan and telemetry records for as long as required by the applicable civil aviation regulator (notification records for a minimum of 48 hours, and flight logs for the statutory retention period), and account data for as long as your account is active. You can request deletion at any time (see your rights below), subject to records we must keep by law.

All data in transit is encrypted using TLS 1.3. Access is controlled by role-based permissions and zone-based isolation so a controller sees only their airspace and a pilot sees only their own data. Administrative actions are recorded in a tamper-evident audit log.

You have the right to:

• access the personal information we hold about you;
• request correction of inaccurate information;
• request deletion, subject to our legal retention duties;
• object to processing and withdraw consent (e.g. turn off location or push);
• export your flight data (GUTMA flight-log format) so you are never locked in;
• lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za.

To exercise any of these, email [email protected].

SwarmATC is intended for licensed or registered drone operators and is not directed at children under 18.

We may update this policy as the service evolves. Material changes will be announced in the app or on swarmatc.com, and the effective date above will be revised.

Inn4U — Information Officer
[email protected]