Emma coding the skies

DAR ES SALAAM: IN an industry where safety depends on flawless compliance, Engineer Emma Alice Kizitto is rewriting aviation rules, in code.

Her creation, Sky AI, is turning the paperwork-heavy world of airline and drone regulations into a fast, seamless process, putting Tanzanian innovation at the heart of aviation’s future.

It’s a leap born not in a tech lab, but in the operations office of Auric Air, where Emma once spent hours sifting through dense aviation manuals to keep up with everchanging Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) regulations. The work was slow, repetitive, and critical every page had the potential to impact safety.

That grind sparked a question that would change her career What if compliance could be automated?

Eng Emma’s answer became Sky AI, an aviation compliance chatbot designed to make meeting TCAA regulations faster and easier for airlines, drone operators, training institutions, and engineers.

She said the platform uses machine learning to process thousands of pages of regulatory documents and translate complex legal language into clear, actionable steps.

According to her, for maintenance crews, it delivers real-time updates when safety protocols change. For drone operators, it automates approval routing. For training academies, it ensures their curriculums remain up-todate.

She said at its core, Sky AI offers two main tools, the Manual Review Tool which allows users to upload their operational manuals, which the system analyses against current TCAA regulations.

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“It flags compliance gaps, recommends changes, and reduces the risk of audit failures, work that once took weeks for a team of five but now can be done in hours by just two people,” she said Eng Emma said the AI-powered Q&A assistant answers direct questions from the latest TCAA regulations.

“You can ask something like, ‘How many hours can a flight crew work in seven consecutive days?’ and get an instant, cited answer,” Emma explains. Sky AI currently operates independently from TCAA’s internal databases but stays aligned with the latest publicly available documents.

Since its launch this year, it has onboarded nine aviation professionals, including pilots, engineers, and compliance officers, and is now finalising the onboarding of a full Air Operator Certificate holder.

Eng Emma said the platform has been reviewed and approved for use in aviation companies by TCAA, with discussions underway for formal endorsement and even the possibility of TCAA becoming a client.

“We paired AI outputs with human review so results could be verified. That way, people could see this wasn’t replacing their expertise — it was amplifying it,” Eng Emma says.

She also overcame another major hurdle, the lack of structured digital access to regulations. By manually curating a regulation database and creating her own mapping system, she ensured Sky AI could deliver fast, accurate responses.

She said with regulatory data comes responsibility thus Sky AI uses industry-standard encryption and secure cloud infrastructure, following Tanzania’s Personal Data Protection Act.

“All user data is stored securely, accessed only by authorised personnel, and never shared without consent,” Eng Emma assures.

Eng Emma’s journey into innovation didn’t begin in Silicon Valley but in the heart of Tanzania’s aviation sector. As a Quality Officer at Auric Air, she learned the operational and compliance demands of the industry firsthand. That experience gave her the insight to design a tool grounded in real-world challenges.

Before Sky AI, she said manual reviews could stretch for weeks, often delaying approvals or risking missed compliance updates.

“Now, tasks that once drained time and resources can be completed in a fraction of the time, helping companies avoid penalties and prepare for audits with confidence,” she said.

Eng Emma sees Sky AI as part of the future of aviation oversight in Africa. Plans are underway to add automated Statements of Compliance and expand into other East African Community member states. She believes the technology could eventually become a standard tool for regulators and operators alike.

“It can reduce workloads during audits, improve transparency, and encourage a proactive compliance culture,” she says.

As a female innovator in aviation and tech, Eng Emma has had to push through barriers both seen and unseen from proving her technical expertise to challenging assumptions in male-dominated rooms.

“I have had to work harder to be taken seriously, but it’s also been an opportunity to bring fresh perspectives and create solutions that genuinely serve people,” she says.

“You don’t need to wait for permission to solve problems. If something isn’t working, build something better. You can belong in boardrooms, labs, hangars and at the controls of your own ideas,” she advises young innovators With Sky AI, Eng Emma isn’t just streamlining aviation regulations she’s showing what’s possible when innovation meets determination.

By blending AI with industry expertise, she is making compliance faster, smarter, and more reliable, while inspiring a new generation of women to look up at the skies and see possibility.

Her work is proof that the future of aviation won’t just be built by engineers in coveralls or executives in boardrooms. It will also be shaped by innovators with the courage to reimagine the rules and, in Emma’s case, to write them in code.