Why should you buy SKYPRO products?

Absolute Comfort

Comfort is everything, every day. That's why you must fly with our SKYPRO airline shoes.

A recent user opinion survey reported that next to style and fashion, comfort is the second key aspect in purchasing footwear (Franciosa P. et al, 2013). Shoe comfort is easily perceived by people, even more so by aviation crew professionals. However, it is a complex feature influenced by several aspects: foot shape, shoe fit, weight, thermal comfort (inner shoe heat and humidity climate), breathability and biomechanics subjects (such as shock absorption and plantar pressure distribution).

SKYPRO has highly specialized technical experts committed to provide the best airline crew shoes for flight attendants, pilots, and ground-handling users. A continuous research and development activity in footwear construction, together with a selection of top edge shoe materials, lead to high levels of comfort, well-being, safety, and reduced fatigue.

For SKYPRO airline shoes, biomechanics is a very important subject. Our cabin shoes gather a combination of special bottom shoe materials with improved shoe construction procedures, thus insuring the right shock and impact forces (that cause foot pain, knee pain and back pain) absortion as well as high flexibility, which reduces fatigue and protects the foot anatomy and physiology. Special features are as follows:

• Shock and heel strike absorption, by attenuation of the impact waves generated during gait, preventing musculoskeletal disorders;
• Improved flexibility, via a laminated structure of high performance materials that provide higher flexibility during gait and superior comfort.

SKYPRO insoles are based on Poron technology, a special microcellular structure that possesses amazing features, such as:

• Compression set resistance, which does not lose more than 3% of its cushioning even after 10.000 steps;
• Breathable technology, allowing feet to breathe, while keeping a suitable temperature inside the shoe;
• Softness and resilience;
• Absorption of ground impact, moving up through the musculoskeletal system, and protecting your spine and joints.

Anti-Skid

SKYPRO cabin shoes were developed to protect you from several risks assessments led by the Health and Safety related institutions (as HSE and Civil Aviation Authority in UK, Flight Safety Foundation in US, among others), who highlight the need for awareness in fall prevention. Several risks are present in daily aviation activities, such as: airplane oils, jet fuel, low friction steel plates, wet stairways, and slippery airport floors, which increase the risk of injuries sustained by cabin crews.

According to recent guidelines on the Guidance of Good Practice in Occupational Health and Safety on-board Aircraft (Civil Aviation Authority, UK), a survey encompassing ten airlines in 2007 revealed that significant injuries have been the common outcome from slips and trips, as well as a substantial loss in productivity due to crew members' absence. Having in mind cabin shoes’ importance, SKYPRO has put a continuous effort in the development of an Anti-Skid System for the outsoles, whose main characteristics are:

• Innovative materials with suitable slip resistance;
• Specific groove orientation and design;
• Improved ground/shoe interaction.

Research activities still run at this level, and further improvements in materials and components shall be presented briefly for a new technological evolution step in user’s safety and protection.

Our court shoes have a special track design for an immediately adaptation to different platforms in any latitude. SKYPRO airline shoes provide you with the best protection wherever you are.

Anti-Static

The safety of crew staffs is a priority to SKYPRO's cabin crew shoes. Users continuously witness the existence of electrostatic discharges in everyday environments and activities. On aircrafts, this effect is even more evident, since there is an intense friction between the airplane and the surrounding air during the movement caused by the act of flying, which will generate high levels of static electricity. Moreover, air humidity at an altitude between 10 and 50 km is extremely low and sets up the perfect environment for the accumulation of such charges (Pasko, et al, 1996).

This static electricity will tend to dissipate when in contact with the ground, generating huge electrostatic charges, observed as sparks, that cause discomfort and, more importantly, affecting equipment and people’s safety. In certain equipment, this issue has been foreseen ever since the beginning of air flights and safety components are already in effect. But regarding people, how are these accumulated electrostatic charges dissipated in safe conditions?

SKYPRO’s research team carries on the development of a technology supported by specific materials with proven anti-static properties and a special shoe construction, which ensures a controlled dissipation of electric discharges, leaving the body and reaching the ground in safer conditions, and ensuring users full protection against electrostatic discharges.

Alarm-Free

SKYPRO developed airport-friendly shoes. In most of major airports worldwide, men and women are demanded to take off their shoes to be checked in the X-ray scanner. For cabin crew staff, this procedure is very annoying and time-consuming given that it has to be performed several times per day. Moreover, it should be somehow considered unhygienic and even a potential health risk, since airport carpets in security control areas are the ideal environment for fungi and bacteria to mature, which can lead to diseases such as: athlete’s foot (tinea pedis), allergic contact dermatitis, and eczemas (Friedmann, 1998).

Being aware of this potential health risk, SKYPRO's researchers rethought their shoe models and developed an alarm-free technology that replaced the metal parts by integrating innovative composite materials that ensure the same physical and mechanical properties and perform as common metal-based components.

The main effort set off with the replacement of a metal plate called shank, also known among shoemakers as the “soul of the shoe”, that supports and guarantees the shoe stability, especially in medium/high heels, by connecting the heel to the shoe forepart, providing a better plantar pressure distribution for an improved comfort.

Ambicork

Because there were no details left behind on SKYPRO's aviation footwear, we added cork to it, a full natural and sustainable material, harvested every nine years from the outer bark of the cork oak tree, allowing for new bark to grow without any damage to the tree. Cork has unique properties, such as lightness, thermal insulation, resilience, cushioning, good humidity control and good resistance to mold and mildew.

In our cabin crew shoes, a cork inner layer is applied onto the insole ensuring user’s protection either in cold (snow or ice) or hot environments (hot airplane tracks), providing additional comfort to the feet, through a better thermal insulation. Cork has a honeycomb structure that provides an air-filled structure enabling a simple layer of cork to give the feet a more controlled, mild temperature, even when someone stands for a long period of time in everyday ground surfaces. By combining cork properties with the performance of SKYPRO's insole and outer materials, a suitable combination is achieved, highlighting the thermal and impact insulation of the different models of SKYPRO's airline shoes.

Innocuous leathers

Protect the health and well being of the cabin crew members is mandatory for SKYPRO.

Our airline shoes are made only with the best raw materials and for that reason we choose meticulously the best quality natural calf leathers. All our leathers are innocuous, free of chemical components to guarantee the protection of every aviation professionals.

All the leathers used in SKYPRO shoes are tested at independent laboratories to ensure they are free of any dangerous substances that affect human health. More than 15 human dangerous chemical substances are tested as: chromium, aromatic amines, Chlorophenols, Formaldehyde, Organotin compounds, DMFU and heavy metals like, cadmium, lead, nickel. Cientifical studies prove that these substances are highly toxic and can rapidly enter the body through the skin resulting in injuries like dermatitis, eczemas and adverse health effects, including neurological damage and cancers.