Case study · Volo Libero Friuli
Volo Libero Friuli - Shuttle booking system
Telegram bot + driver web app, plugged into a paragliding community's existing workflows. 13,000+ passengers and 2,000+ rides in 4 years, zero unplanned downtime.
Summary
A shuttle management and booking system for a paragliding association, integrated into Telegram. In production for 4 years, it has handled over 2,000 rides and 13,000 passengers with cumulative downtime under 4 hours total. A multi-tenant architecture designed from the start to be replicable at other free-flight associations across Europe.
Client
Volo Libero Friuli, a sport-flying (paragliding) association based in the province of Udine. The shuttles take pilots from the landing fields up to the high-altitude take-offs on Mount Cuarnan and Mount San Simeone, with routes and stops that vary depending on weather, thermals and the number of participants.
Problem
Before the system, bookings lived in a Telegram group. A pilot would write “shuttle at 10 to Cuarnan, who’s coming?”; anyone who wanted to join would copy the message, add their name and paste it back into the group. Concurrent edits were impossible, dozens of overlapping messages piled up, errors were constant. Drivers spent hours reconstructing who needed to go where, on which vehicle, at what time. On weekends and in high season the workflow collapsed under its own weight.
Solution
A Telegram bot as the primary booking interface, leveraging the channel the community already used every day (immediate adoption, zero friction). Ride status always up to date and visible to everyone: available seats, participants, stops, times, assigned vehicle, driver, real-time announcements. Per-user configurable notifications, a multilingual interface, geographic pins for stops, take-offs and landings. A separate web app for drivers to manage rides, stops and last-minute changes.
Tech stack
Bot backend in Go, web backend in Python, frontend in React, TimescaleDB database. Deployed on a self-managed Kubernetes cluster on Oracle Cloud, with redundancy and end-to-end TLS.
Results
- 2,000+ shuttle rides handled in 4 years.
- 13,000+ passengers carried.
- ~1,000 registered users, 40-100 active daily.
- Zero unplanned downtime in 4 years of operation.
- Database maintenance under 1h/year cumulative.
Why it worked
The system was built with a very tight feedback loop with its future users - pilots, drivers, organizers. That work surfaced constraints and operational edge cases that a generic vendor could not have anticipated up front. The architecture was designed from the outset to be multi-tenant and fully configurable, so it can be offered to other free-flight associations across Europe.