From Groundswell to Groundbreaking

Fyve By Startup Targets $5 Billion Aviation Ground Damage Problem with New Technology

Georgia Southern alumni Preston LaVangie and Benjamin Youngstrom have created a new ground radar technology to prevent ground damage to planes. Photo by Jonathan Chick.

You never think much about how jets get parked on the runway, ramp or apron, or in the hangar. But you should. The only innovation in the industry came from using flag men with flares called wing walkers who were often armed with nothing more high tech than whistles. The industry started doing that more than 75 years ago. 

Solving the problem is the idea behind the startup Fyve By, based in Atlanta. It was started by an engineering grad and a business management grad from Georgia Southern.  

“The concept was that we wanted to solve the ground movement damage issue,” said Benjamin Youngstrom (’22), the business management grad, chief executive officer and co-founder of Fyve By. “The problem with business and commercial aircraft getting damaged being moved around on the ground, is a much bigger issue than it seems.”

The ground movement issue is a $5- to $10-billion-a-year problem the aviation industry faces. Aircraft on the ground run into other aircraft, equipment, vehicles and tools — you name it.

“It’s an industry that most people don’t even take a second look at,” said Preston LaVangie (‘21), another of the co-founders, engineering major and chief product officer of Fyve By. “It’s always just been there and the aviation industry kind of just accepted the status quo. They think, ‘maybe we damage one or two planes a year.’ But, that’s $1 million in damage a year that they’ve just accepted”

Originally, Fyve By wanted to take robots, put sensors on them and have them do the job to eliminate human error. However, the problem with putting sensors on robots is just as big as the problem of people driving the robots: sensors can’t see around an airplane. 

“You have to build external infrastructure,” said Youngstrom. “So we started building the infrastructure and streaming it to the operator on the ground. We’ve seen a drastic reduction in damage and an increase in hangar optimization and capacity within our beta testing trials.”

A lot of Fyve By’s engineering came from going out and working with line crews at airports in the Atlanta area. 

“We would go spend a day out there moving aircraft with them, watching their patterns, interviewing them,” said LaVangie. “The system design came from talking with people and how they actually want to use technology.”

Fyve By is a member of the Advanced Technology Development Center’s ATDC Accelerate startup portfolio, the State of Georgia’s technology startup incubator. They worked many long hours to get in.

On the third try, they managed to succeed.

“The third time we really refined our pitch to the ADTC,” said LaVangie. “We started working with a hangar and a maintenance operator. Finally they said, ‘we like the idea and we can tell you’re going somewhere. You have three or four months to get customers, have a product and raise money, or you’re out.’ 

“So in that time we managed to raise our pre-seed round in a month, we built a much more advanced technology and expanded our testing locations. But that little bit of opportunity really lit a fire under us and sent us off to get the rest of it done.” 

“And Dr. Marrero helped us too, in the early stages,” said Youngstrom. “He was nice enough to take an hour and go through our slide deck and offer suggestions. The amount of patience he had back then was amazing. It’s just one reason why he is the president of Georgia Southern.”

LaVangie and Youngstrom pose with one of their ground radar units. Photo by Jonathan Chick.

Youngstrom and LaVangie participated in the 2024 National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) Schedulers and Dispatchers Conference in March of this year. It turned out to be an exciting time for Fyve By.

“This was the first conference where people not only really liked the product, but actually knew who we were before we met them,” said LaVangie. “They were interested and sought us out. That was certainly a shift from just two kids walking around convention halls, trying to get people’s thoughts on some new technology.”

The Georgia Southern environment helped Youngstrom and LaVangie develop the tools to become innovators.

“Georgia Southern has a unique atmosphere where you have the resources to take on interesting projects,” said Lavangie. “You just have to figure it out, get your hands dirty. It’s not something you can really teach. A lot of entrepreneurial professors make that possible.”

“I think that’s special to Georgia Southern,” said Youngstrom. “And you’ve got a lot of brain trust that has real world experience building really innovative things. They’re just waiting for students to reach out to them. 

“Five by five” is used in the aviation industry to say “loud and clear” over a radio, giving airplanes an “all clear” when moving around hangars or between the terminal and the runway. 

It looks like Fyve By is all clear for success. –– Liz Walker

Photo by Jonathan Chick.