[Update 21:08z]: As at 9:07pm zulu, projectFLY is back online for all users, and the debts cleared.

[Update 16:35z]: projectFLY has reached its £2,000 donation target according to the website, thanks to the generosity of its users. One such donation of £1,250 assisted in achieving the goal.

Original article below.

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The projectFLY service, as well as other products by Mettar Simulations, have been down for more than a day, leaving the community to speculate about what is going on behind the scenes.

Matt Davies, who heads development of the cloud-based platform, posted an update today to Facebook, explaining the past, present and future of the platform:

"V4 is essentially complete. Beyond adding further features (which will forever happen) and perhaps tweaking a few things here and there, it’s good to go. This is pending the “green light” from our dispatcher data partners, AviationCloud. They were away on a business meeting last week which wasn’t communicated in time for me to do anything about."

He continued by saying their Google Cloud Platform account was suspended again yesterday, leading to projectFLY going offline in a similar fashion to October's outage.

Partly paying the bills, as has restored the services in the past, has not done so this time around.

"I paid as much as I could physically afford (around 1/4), but sadly, they didn’t restore services." There is still about GBP £1950 to clear, "about the same as October's bill."

He explained how Google's odd billing procedures mean the account is suspended despite attempting to pay the bill some days in advance.

Matt continued on to the topic of how the community has helped support him since October's outage:

"Since the October issues, we’ve had so many awesome people reach out to offer their services and as a result of this, our v4 infrastructure is not only faster, but cheaper(!).

"We’ve also, as a result of some advice from fellow software developers upgraded our core systems to use either different or more up to date versions of the frameworks we use. That has rapidly improved the speed of the app."

Despite the readiness of V4 however, the outstanding server costs must be paid for in order to migrate the data to the new infrastructure.

"I did mention there may be some sort of secondary funding drive - I definitely left it too late and for that I apologise (if you follow my Twitch channel you’ll know what’s been going on in my personal life).

"So I’m appealing to the side of the community that continues to humble me in the midst of all the idiots."

This is in reference to donations, in which Matt kindly requested their users can do so through Mettar Simulations' PayPal link or website.

"I will naturally pay the bill off the moment it’s possible to do so," continued Matt. "We have kept a record of every projectFLY supporter & their supporting amount. Once v4 is out and settled, we’ll be in touch with a small, but hopefully meaningful way of saying thank you.

"Once we have the data back, we will migrate it over to the new infrastructure and then release v4. Between now and then, we’re continuing to push builds out to our internal testing team & eventually the wider Focus Group. This will at least ensure you have the best possible experience from the new app."

Matt closed by saying problems resulting in downtime and/or funding should not occur, "unless something catastrophic happens."

V4 should keep the platform self-sustained, and the team can then look towards working on other projects.

A Q4 statement was posted about a month ago regarding everything under the Mettar Simulation umbrella, available to view here.

Today's statement was posted to Facebook and to projectFLY's website.