In the fast-paced environment of fighter squadrons, scheduling is more than just administrative work—it's a critical function that directly impacts mission readiness, operational effectiveness, and the cost of maintaining our military. For years, flying squadrons have relied on existing systems of record that create significant cognitive burdens and waste incredible amounts of time.

Enter The Gonkulator (known more colloquially simply as “Gonk”), a schedule editor built for pilots, by pilots. The fighter community instantly recognized the value of an intuitive, easy-to-use scheduling tool built by one of their own, and what started as a homegrown solution quickly spread across flying squadrons.

While Gonk excelled at providing an intuitive interface for schedule editing, OpsLab recognized an opportunity to take this already valuable tool to the next level. Our legacy product, Sky Schedule, brought powerful automation capabilities that perfectly complemented Gonk's user interface, and OpsLab as a company offered a team ready to provide robust end user support.

These complimentary functions allowed us to further amplify the growth of Gonk by ensuring continuous operation without service interruptions, preserving the core functionality that made Gonk so popular, and quickly adopting new features specifically designed to alleviate pilot pain points. Our philosophy centered on iterative improvement and deep user understanding, allowing us to evolve the product in a way that felt natural and beneficial, never disruptive.

Unlocking New Value

The decision to acquire Gonk wasn't made lightly—it was based on a strategic vision to combine the beloved user experience that pilots had come to rely on with advanced automation capabilities that could further reduce cognitive load in the scheduling process. Gonk had also reached critical mass adoption which required a dedicated team to provide professional customer support and maintain cybersecurity compliance.

OpsLab's acquisition of Gonk addressed these concerns by providing the resources needed to ensure long-term viability while preserving what made Gonk special. Rather than drastically changing a tool that users already loved, we focused on maintaining the interface while enhancing it with our automation expertise and expanded engineering team. This approach enabled us to truly build, and it allowed us to move quickly towards tackling broader scheduling process challenges that Gonk wasn’t yet able to address.

A “Users First” Mentality

Our commitment to user satisfaction extends far beyond product development. In fact, we believe it’s been the backbone of our success as a company thus far. At OpsLab, we've developed robust feedback mechanisms designed to meet users where they are, recognizing the numerous already native to their daily lives. Users can connect with us through multiple channels, including Slack and phone support, with established Service Level Agreements (SLAs) ensuring timely responses to any outages or issues that arise.

This approach allows us to prioritize user feedback alongside larger roadmap initiatives, balancing quick wins with long-term feature development. Each release is accompanied by comprehensive release notes documenting new features, and we provide both on-site workshops and virtual training calls to facilitate smooth adoption.

This support system helps us as much as it helps our end users. Our community of over 3,000 users across nearly 60 U.S. Air Force squadrons provides invaluable real-time feedback from diverse operational environments, creating a powerful requirements-gathering engine that drives continuous improvement. By carefully evaluating feedback through the lens of effort versus impact, we can deliver solutions that address common pain points while avoiding overly customized features that would benefit only a small segment of users.

Of our 60 squadrons, the onboarding of 10 new squadrons in the last year highlights Gonk’s ongoing growth and power to alleviate scheduling challenges.

Collaboration is Key

To highlight one example, our strategic partnership with Hill Air Force Base represents a significant milestone in this journey. As the largest F-35 Air Force Base in Air Combat Command, Hill serves as our power user for demonstrating the transformative potential of automation in military flight scheduling. The engagement with Hill AFB provides a perfect testing ground for our enhanced Gonk platform – SkySchedule 2.0 – allowing us to refine our automation capabilities in collaboration with experienced personnel operating the Air Force's most advanced fighter aircraft. By working closely with their squadrons, we're iteratively improving our automation capabilities to address the nuanced requirements of F-35 operations while maintaining the foundation that made Gonk successful in the first place.

The journey from a squadron-developed tool to an enterprise solution backed by OpsLab's engineering expertise represents more than just product evolution—it's a testament to the power of user-centered design and the importance of maintaining that focus even as capabilities expand. By combining the intuitive interface users love with powerful automation that reduces cognitive load, we're delivering solutions that directly enhance combat capability by allowing aircrews to focus on their primary mission: flying and fighting.

From Squadron-Built to Enterprise Solution: The Gonkulator’s Journey

On the Ground with AETC’s 88th Flying Training Squadron