Privacy
Last updated October 3, 2026
Fox Hot Air is a free app for hot air balloon pilots. This page says plainly what it stores, why, and who can see it.
What we store
- Your account: your name, email address, and your password (stored only as a secure hash; nobody can read it).
- Your flights: the GPS track, altitudes, times, and anything you type in (launch and landing sites, pilot, balloon, passengers, pibal, notes).
- Your briefing records: each briefing you run, the place and time it was for, the result, and the list of sources it checked, with the time it was saved.
- Zone maps you share: the file you upload and the shapes in it.
- Feedback you send, and whether it's OK to email you about it.
- A sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in on your phone, and a note of the last time it was used.
Your location
The app uses your phone's location only when you ask it to: when you choose "Current location" for a briefing, and while the Fly tab is tracking a flight. Your phone asks your permission first, and you can turn it off at any time in your phone's settings.
Who sees what
- Your flights, briefing records and feedback are private to your account.
- Zone maps you share are shared with every registered Fox Hot Air pilot, with your first name as the person who shared them. That is the point of sharing them.
- The Fox Hot Air team can see the list of registered pilots, zone maps and feedback, to run the service and answer you.
- We don't sell your data, we don't show ads, and we don't send anything to the FAA. Your briefing records are there for you if you ever need them.
Services the app uses
To build a briefing, the app sends the latitude and longitude you're asking about (never your name or email) to public weather and map services: Open-Meteo, the National Weather Service, aviationweather.gov, the FAA's airspace data, and OpenStreetMap. Map pictures come from Esri, OpenStreetMap and OpenTopoMap. The app and its database run on DigitalOcean in the United States.
Keeping and deleting your data
We keep your account and data until you ask us to delete them. You can delete any flight yourself in the Log. To delete your whole account, send a message from the Feedback tab in the app and we'll remove your account, flights, briefing records and feedback. Zone maps you shared will be removed too unless you ask us to keep them for other pilots.
Questions
Use the Feedback tab in the app and we'll answer you there.