After almost a year and a half of radio silence, the Aviation Guide app is finally taking off again. This is the first update to land on Google Play in 18 months — and it sets the runway for a much bigger 2026 roadmap.
If you have the app installed, you can grab the new version on Google Play right now. If you don’t, install Aviation Guide here and follow along.
Why the long pause?
Side projects always live in the gaps between life and full-time work, and Aviation Guide was no exception. The app kept running, downloads kept ticking up, and feedback kept coming in — but the codebase needed a serious tune-up before any new features could land safely. The previous release (0.1.79) had reached a point where adding new aircraft data was painful, and a few persistent bugs were quietly ruining the reading experience for users in non-Latin locales.
This update is the first step out of that hole.
What’s fixed in this release
Text encoding finally works
The most-reported issue from the last year and a half was broken character encoding in aircraft descriptions. Cyrillic and other non-Latin texts displayed as garbled symbols on a number of devices and locales, which made entire sections of content unreadable for many users. That is fixed.
All description fields now render correctly across supported languages, on both old and new Android versions. If you saw squares, question marks, or “Mojibake-style” text in the past, please update — it should be gone.
Fresh aircraft data, rolling out gradually
New aircraft entries and image galleries are being added in waves rather than in one giant content drop. This keeps the rollout stable and gives me room to verify each batch before it goes live.
By the end of the May holidays, the entire database will be refreshed: every aircraft profile reviewed, every gallery updated, and the data layer aligned with the new content pipeline. After that, adding new planes becomes much faster — which directly feeds into everything coming next.
What’s coming next: the 2026 roadmap
The encoding fix and content refresh were the unblocker. Now the actual fun stuff begins. Here’s what’s queued up for the next releases.
A redesigned interface
The current UI has served the app well, but it’s showing its age. The next major release will bring a refreshed visual language: cleaner typography, better use of imagery, and a navigation structure that scales as more aircraft and content categories get added. Expect a more modern feel without losing the focus on aircraft data that long-time users come back for.
Aircraft comparison
One of the most-requested features over the years has been a side-by-side comparison view. Pick two (or more) aircraft and compare their specs — dimensions, weight, range, speed, crew, armament, service history — in a single screen. This is the kind of feature aviation enthusiasts and modelers have been asking for, and it’s now firmly on the roadmap.
Quizzes
Aviation Guide has always been a reference app, but the upcoming quizzes will turn it into something you can also play with. Test yourself on aircraft silhouettes, technical specs, or historical context. Quizzes will pull from the same database that powers the rest of the app, so the more it grows, the deeper the question pool gets.
Achievements
To go with quizzes (and exploration in general), the next phase introduces user achievements: unlockables for browsing aircraft families, completing quiz streaks, and digging into specific eras or manufacturers. The goal is to reward curiosity, not to gamify the app into something it isn’t.
Thanks for sticking around
A genuine thank-you to everyone who kept the app installed during the quiet period, sent feedback, or left a review. The roadmap above exists because of those messages.
If you want to help shape what comes next, the best things you can do are:
- Update the app and give the new aircraft data a look
- Leave a rating or review on Google Play — it makes a real difference for an indie aviation app
- Send feature requests through the in-app feedback form
More updates are coming soon. The runway is clear.