★VÉLA

Privacy policy

Version 2.1 — 27 July 2026

Who we are

VÉLA is a personal lifestyle planning tool for people who work across time zones. It is operated by Vela4Crew Inc., a Delaware corporation (“VÉLA”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). VÉLA is not a medical device and does not provide medical, health, or clinical advice.

This policy describes what information we collect when you use the VÉLA website (velaforcrew.com) and the VÉLA mobile application, how we use that information, and the choices you have.

Information we collect

Information you provide

  • Account information — when you create an account we collect an email address and any display name you choose.
  • Schedule and roster data — duty periods, layover locations, and shift patterns you enter to generate planning estimates. When you enter a flight number, it is sent to a third-party public flight data service (AeroDataBox) to retrieve route and timing information; the flight number is publicly available information and no personal data is included in that request. Your assembled roster — the combination of your flights and schedule — stays on your device or in your private account and is never shared with your employer, airline, or any aviation authority.
  • Preferences and settings — sleep timing preferences, notification settings, and planning configuration you choose within the app.
  • Adherence feedback — the app allows you to optionally record how well you followed guidance (for example, sleep timing, light exposure, or nutrition suggestions). This information is stored in your private account and is used solely to update your personal planning estimates within the app. It is not shared, sold, or used for any other purpose.
  • Survey responses — if you complete our cabin crew survey, your answers are stored anonymously and are never linked to your identity. If you choose to join the waitlist at the end of the survey, your contact details are stored in a completely separate record with no reference back to your survey answers. It is architecturally impossible for us — or anyone else — to connect your survey responses to your identity.
  • Waitlist and early access sign-ups — if you join our waitlist or request early access, we collect your first name, email address, and optionally your airline. This information is used solely to contact you about VÉLA’s launch and related updates.
  • Subscription and purchase information — if you buy a VÉLA subscription, we receive a record of what you bought and whether it is still active (plan, purchase and renewal dates, trial status, and whether the subscription is current, cancelled, or expired), linked to your account so the app can unlock the right features. We never see or store your full card number, CVC, or bank details — those go directly to the payment platform you buy through and are never sent to us. See “Subscriptions and payments” below.
  • Support communications — messages you send us via the support page or email.

Information collected automatically

  • Usage analytics — aggregated or pseudonymous data about features used, session length, and error events. We use this to understand how the app and website are used and to improve them. These events do not include flight numbers, names, email addresses, or raw roster text. We do not build individual profiles for advertising. In the app, a Data use notice explains this and offers an optional research toggle (“Help improve future guidance”) that is off unless you turn it on. App analytics are stored in Supabase; website analytics are provided by Vercel Analytics.
  • Crash and performance reports — technical diagnostics that help us identify and fix issues.
  • Device information — operating system version, app version, and device type, used for compatibility and support.
  • IP address (hashed) — when you submit a survey, a one-way hash of your IP address is stored for spam and abuse prevention only. The hash cannot be reversed to identify you.

What we do not collect

VÉLA does not collect biometric data, vital signs, or clinical health measurements. The app’s estimates are derived from your schedule and published sleep science models — they are not health measurements. We do not access HealthKit, Google Fit, or wearable sensor data in the current version of the app.

VÉLA also does not collect your location (the app requests no location permission), does not access your camera, photos, microphone, contacts, calendar, or files, does not contain advertising or advertising identifiers, does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites, and does not store full payment card numbers.

How we use your information

  • To provide and operate the VÉLA service.
  • To generate body-clock and sleep timing estimates based on your schedule.
  • To respond to support requests and communications.
  • To generate personalised advice, including advice written with the help of a language model (see “Personalised advice and AI” below).
  • To sell and manage subscriptions, unlock the features you paid for, restore purchases, and handle billing support.
  • To improve the app using aggregated usage insights.
  • To send service-related notifications if you opt in.
  • To contact waitlist and early access subscribers about the VÉLA launch.
  • To meet legal and compliance obligations.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not use your data to provide medical advice, diagnostic assessments, or safety-critical guidance.

Subscriptions and payments

VÉLA is free to download and offers paid subscriptions. We do not process payments ourselves and we never receive your full card number, CVC, or bank details. Depending on where you subscribe, your payment is handled by:

  • Google Play Billing — for subscriptions bought inside the Android app. Google handles the payment and holds your payment details under Google’s own privacy policy.
  • Apple App Store billing — for subscriptions bought inside the iOS app, on the same basis, under Apple’s privacy policy.
  • Paddle — our authorised reseller and merchant of record for subscriptions bought directly on this website, under Paddle’s privacy policy.

RevenueCat sits behind all of these. It is a subscription-management service that tells the app whether your subscription is active so the right features unlock. To do that it receives an account identifier for you, the device platform, and the purchase and renewal events reported by the store — not your card details, and not your roster, schedule, or advice content. We use this information only to give you the access you paid for, to restore purchases on a new device, and to handle support and refund requests.

Cancelling and refunds are covered in our terms and refund policy.

Personalised advice and AI

Some of VÉLA’s personalised guidance is produced with the help of a large language model (LLM). This happens on our backend, hosted by Supabase: the app sends your planning context to our own secure function, which builds a prompt and calls an LLM provider — currently Google (Gemini), with Anthropic (Claude) as an alternative — and returns the wording to your app.

What is sent. Only the context needed to write the advice: your roster and schedule context (flight times, airports, duty and rest periods, time-zone shifts) and your planning preferences (for example chronotype, target sleep hours, and caffeine cut-off), together with the app’s own calculated body-clock estimates.

What is not sent. Your password, or any password (we never have access to your password in any form), your name, your email address, your payment details, and your account identifier are not included in the prompt sent to the LLM provider. Your account is checked for a valid session and an active subscription before the request runs, but that check happens on our backend and the identifier used is stored only in one-way hashed form in our own logs. We do not permit the LLM provider to use your content to train its models.

The output is generated, not human-written. Advice text produced this way is generated automatically by a language model. It is general lifestyle and wellness information based on your schedule and published sleep science — it is not medical advice, not a diagnosis, not written or reviewed by a clinician before you see it, and not operational or regulatory guidance. Generated text can be wrong or incomplete. Always use your own judgement, follow your airline’s procedures, and consult a qualified professional for medical concerns. If a piece of generated advice looks wrong, offensive, or unsafe, please tell us at founder@velaforcrew.com so we can investigate.

Information sharing

We share your information only in the following limited circumstances:

  • Service providers — we use third-party infrastructure providers to operate the service:
    • Google Firebase — sign-in and account management (Firebase Authentication), storage of your account, roster, and settings (Firestore), crash reports (Crashlytics), and performance diagnostics (Performance Monitoring) for the mobile app.
    • Supabase — our backend. It hosts the advice function described above (including the call to the LLM provider), roster enrichment and lookup services, product-usage analytics for the app, and storage of survey responses and waitlist sign-ups from the website.
    • Google (Gemini) / Anthropic (Claude) — the large language model providers our backend calls to write personalised advice. They receive the roster and preference context described in “Personalised advice and AI” above, and no account, contact, or payment details.
    • RevenueCat — subscription status and entitlement management, so the app knows which features to unlock. See “Subscriptions and payments” above.
    • Google Play Billing, Apple App Store billing, and Paddle — the payment platforms that process subscription purchases. They hold your payment details; we do not.
    • MailerLite — email delivery for early access and waitlist communications. Only subscribers who have explicitly signed up receive emails.
    • AeroDataBox — a public flight data API used to look up route and timing information from a flight number. Only the flight number is sent; no personal data is transmitted.
    • Vercel — website hosting and pseudonymous web analytics.
    These providers process data on our behalf under their own privacy and security standards.
  • Legal requirements — we may disclose information if required by law, regulation, or valid legal process.
  • Business transfers — if VÉLA is acquired or merges with another entity, your information may transfer as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change.

We do not share your roster or schedule data with your employer, airline, or any regulatory authority unless required by law.

Independence from your airline

VÉLA has no connection to your airline, employer, or any aviation authority — and that is by design.

  • We do not request, access, or store any internal airline systems data, crew management data, scheduling system data, or operational information.
  • We do not ask for your employee ID, crew ID, staff number, or any airline-issued credential.
  • We do not share any information with your airline, employer, union, regulator, or any third party acting on their behalf.
  • Your use of VÉLA is entirely private. No one at your airline can see that you use it, what your schedule looks like in the app, or what the app estimates for you.
  • VÉLA is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or integrated into any airline’s systems or Fatigue Risk Management programme.

The only flight information VÉLA retrieves externally is public route and timing data looked up by flight number (see “Schedule and roster data” above). This is the same information available on any public flight tracker.

Data retention

We retain your account information and schedule data for as long as your account is active. Survey responses are retained indefinitely in anonymised form for product research. Waitlist and early access contact details are retained until you unsubscribe or request deletion. You may request deletion of your account and associated data at any time (see “Your choices” below). Subscription and transaction records are retained by our payment platforms and by RevenueCat for as long as required for billing, tax, and accounting purposes, even after an account is deleted. Aggregated analytics data that cannot identify you individually may be retained for longer to support product improvement.

Your choices

  • Account deletion — you can delete your account and associated data at any time from within the app, under Profile. Deletion is permanent and cannot be undone. If you can’t open the app, you can request deletion by email — see our account deletion page for both options and what gets deleted. Deleting your account does not automatically cancel a subscription bought through Google Play, the App Store, or this website — cancel that in your store subscription settings or via the manage-subscription link in your receipt.
  • Research data — the optional “Help improve future guidance” toggle in the app’s Data use notice is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off again at any time.
  • Access and correction — you can update your account details and schedule information at any time within the app.
  • Unsubscribe — every email we send includes an unsubscribe link. You can also contact us directly to be removed from any mailing list.
  • Analytics opt-out — where platform controls allow, you can limit analytics collection. This does not affect core app functionality.
  • Regional rights — depending on your location, you may have additional rights under applicable privacy law (for example, GDPR in the European Economic Area, or UK GDPR). Contact us to exercise those rights.

Children

VÉLA is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 16. If you believe we have inadvertently collected such information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly.

Security

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your information. No system is completely secure; we encourage you to use a strong password and to contact us if you notice any suspicious activity related to your account.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we do, we will revise the date at the top of this page. For material changes, we will provide notice through the app or by email where we have your address.

Contact

For privacy-related questions, account deletion requests, or to exercise your data rights, contact us at founder@velaforcrew.com or via the support page.

Vela4Crew Inc., 131 Continental Dr, Suite 305, Newark, DE 19713, USA.

Version 2.1 — 27 July 2026