Getting started
Challenges
Your personal flight is solo. A Challenge is a crew of up to 7 people sharing one bird. Every proof from any member lifts it, but a wall rises behind the bird and only a crew that keeps showing up climbs fast enough to stay ahead of it.
How it works
A crew shares one bird and one altitude, shown in meters from 0 m to 5,000 m. Any member's qualifying proof lifts it, and the bird drifts down a little each day between posts, exactly like the personal flight. The difference is the wall: a floor that rises behind the bird every day. Touch it and the formation breaks. Outrun it for the full challenge and the crew wins.
- Each proof lifts the shared bird by 500 m, capped at one proof's worth per member per day. Five posts from one person in one day still only count once.
- The bird drifts down by 200 m per day between posts. This is gentler than a personal flight's decay, so a single post always nets a climb that day. Posting is never a net loss.
- The wall rises 350-475 m per day depending on crew size, starting on day two. Bigger crews face a slightly steeper wall. A solo (1-person) challenge has no wall at all: only going silent crashes it, exactly like a personal flight.
- Day one is a grace period. No wall, so a crew starting from the ground has a full day to get airborne before the race begins.
- The wall stops rising at 4,500 m, just under the bird's 5,000 m ceiling, so a crew that has climbed to the top is never falsely caught once the wall maxes out.
The wall is the real opponent
A single member posting alone always lifts the bird, but for a crew of two or more it is not enough to out-climb the wall on its own. The app shows a "Need daily" count on the challenge page: the fewest members who need to post that day to stay ahead of the wall. For any crew of 2 to 7, that number is 2.
| Who posts that day (2-person crew) | Lift | Decay | Net vs. the 350 m/day wall | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nobody | +0 m | -200 m | -200 m/day | Falls fast |
| One member | +500 m | -200 m | +300 m/day (behind the wall's 350) | Climbs, but the wall gradually catches up |
| Both members | +1,000 m | -200 m | +800 m/day (ahead of the wall) | Climbs well clear |
There is no strict daily gate: what actually matters is the bird's altitude staying above the wall over time, so a day or two of one person posting will not sink a formation that is otherwise well ahead. "Need daily" is a target to aim for, not a rule enforced minute to minute.
Creating and joining a crew
- Start a challenge from /challenges: pick a name, which platforms count as qualifying proof, a duration (7, 14, or 30 days), a start date, and whether it is public (browsable by anyone) or unlisted (joinable only via the invite link).
- Share the challenge's own URL as the invite link. Anyone who opens it while the challenge is still forming can join, up to 7 members total.
- At the scheduled start time the roster locks in at however many people showed up. That headcount fixes the wall's slope (and therefore "need daily") for the entire run: latecomers cannot join once it is flying.
Winning and losing
- Win: the crew's bird stays above the wall for the full challenge duration. Every member who was on the roster earns a formation win, shown as a badge on their public profile.
- Formation broke (crash): the bird touches the wall before the finish. There is no personal penalty: your own solo flight, altitude, and streak are completely untouched. Only the shared crew bird is affected.
Crew feed, leaderboard, and nudges
Every challenge has its own feed and leaderboard at https://flyinpublic.com/challenges/<slug>/crew, reachable from the challenge page. The feed groups qualifying proofs by day; the leaderboard ranks members by distinct days they posted a qualifying proof, so five posts in one day only count as one day kept.
If a crewmate has not posted yet today, any member can send them a one-tap poke from the "Who posted today" list. Pokes are rate-limited to once per pair of members per day, and only work on members who have not already posted.
Telegram alerts
If you have linked Telegram, wall-warning messages arrive on the same staged schedule as personal crash warnings: around 24 hours, 6 hours, and 1 hour before the projected crash. The two earlier stages only nudge members who have not posted yet, since they are the ones who can still act; the final, 1-hour stage goes to the whole crew so nobody is surprised, and it is the one alert that ignores your quiet hours. Every member also gets a Telegram message the moment the challenge resolves, win or crash.