Aviation and
Aerospace Apps
Made with C# and .NET

Aviation software reaches well beyond the cockpit, into the simulators people fly at home and the systems airlines use to sell seats. C# and .NET turn up in several of those places, and most of the evidence comes from the companies' own documentation.

The examples below follow the stack from a flight simulator's add-on layer to an airline reservation platform, with an airline's mobile apps and a defense mission-planning team along the way. Software that runs on board the aircraft is a separate question, and the last section explains where the evidence stops.

The examples at a glance

SimConnect is the SDK Microsoft provides for add-ons that exchange data with Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it covers both the 2020 and 2024 editions. The SDK documentation for each edition states that out-of-process add-ons can be written in C or C++, or in any .NET language when the managed API calls are used. In-process modules are a separate case, written in C++ and compiled to WebAssembly.

A dedicated page on programming SimConnect clients with managed code sets out the .NET route:

The same page uses C# as its primary example language, with Visual Basic examples alongside, and walks through a client that defines its own data structures and sends waypoint lists to AI aircraft. For developers building tools that run next to the simulator and talk to it, C# is the documented starting point.

Microsoft's documentation describes how add-ons communicate with the simulator. It makes no claim about the language the simulator itself is written in, so the C# claim here belongs to the add-on layer.

Ansys Systems Tool Kit (STK) is software that engineers use to model and analyze missions for satellites and aircraft. Its automation layer, the STK Object Model, is a set of COM libraries that represent the application's structure, and Ansys's developer documentation for STK v2026 R1 lists the environments it supports:

The documentation leans on C# for its worked examples. The Object Model tutorial gives its source code in C# and Visual Basic .NET, and a separate tutorial shows how to build a user interface plugin for STK in C#.

C# is one supported route among several. The Object Model tutorial is also published for other languages, including Python, and with the 2025 R2 release Ansys added PySTK, which it describes as the first truly Python-specific API for STK. Ansys's announcement explains that Python users previously worked with the Object Model through naming conventions carried over from C#.

The documentation covers automating STK and extending it. STK's own core is outside what it describes.

Navitaire, an Amadeus company, builds New Skies, a reservation and retailing platform for airlines. Navitaire's own New Skies case study, a PDF carrying a 2025 copyright notice, follows a low-cost airline in the Americas onto the platform and describes it this way:

The case study's results list 70 new interline airline partners and 15 new codeshare partners for the carrier. Navitaire names .NET as the platform's foundation and leaves the programming language unstated.

Where New Skies runs is documented separately, in Navitaire's press releases. In January 2022, Volotea became the first Navitaire customer to move its full New Skies platform to Microsoft Azure. By May 2023, Navitaire had migrated its 60-plus airline customers to Azure and was on track to process more than 850 million reservations in the cloud that year.

The Azure releases describe where the platform runs, and the case study describes what it is built on.

Alaska Airlines appears in a 2016 Microsoft video, now hosted on Microsoft Learn, about how its developers deliver mobile apps for customers and employees. The video describes a mobile DevOps workflow built on Xamarin, Microsoft's .NET framework for cross-platform mobile apps, with Visual Studio Team Services and HockeyApp handling testing and deployment. The video records Alaska's mobile tooling at that point in time.

Hiring evidence comes from Airbus Defence and Space in Getafe, near Madrid. A 2026 posting on Airbus's own careers site for the Tanker and M&L A/C Mission Support Systems team describes the main task as the “design and development of Mission Planning solutions in .NET” for programs such as the A330 MRTT and the C295. An earlier posting for the A400M Mission Planning & Restitution System, closed in September 2025, asked for “excellent C# programming skills.”

Mission planning software helps crews prepare a flight before it takes off, and it runs on the ground. These postings describe one defense team's toolset and make no statement about Airbus's wider systems.

No source found for this article places C# or .NET in flight-critical software on board an aircraft. The documented uses cover simulation add-ons and mission analysis, along with airline reservations, mobile apps and ground-based mission planning.

The C# and .NET work in these examples gathers where aviation software meets people and data on the ground. Simulator add-ons and STK automation give engineers a programmable layer over complex products, and New Skies handles the reservations and partner connections that an airline's revenue depends on.

For teams building aviation or aerospace software on the Microsoft stack, the documentation behind these products shows how established vendors open their systems to C# developers.

Softwarium's industry posts follow C# and .NET into other markets: real estate software, legal technology, oil and gas, energy trading, and supply chain software.

Can developers write Microsoft Flight Simulator add-ons in C#?

Yes, for out-of-process add-ons. Microsoft's SimConnect SDK documentation says these can use any .NET language through the managed API, and its managed-code guide uses C# as the primary example language.

Does Ansys STK support C#?

Yes. Ansys documents the STK Object Model with C# and Visual Basic .NET examples, and the same automation layer works with other languages, including Python through PySTK.

Is Navitaire New Skies built on .NET?

Navitaire's own case study describes New Skies as “based completely on flexible Microsoft .NET technology.” The materials do not name C#, and the platform's move to Microsoft Azure is documented separately.