For me, there is no single IFR application that meets all my requirements but I have been looking for ages and have bought full versions of Rocketroute + Jepp mobile FD, Garmin Pilot and recently the Performance Pro version of Foreflight.
Anecdotally, I had given up with GP ages ago as it never seemed to be able to find a route. And when it did it had typically a 40% trip overhead. This is in spite of the routing engine being Auorouter which always seems to create a swift and sensible route.
So, I thought I would do a four-way comparison between Autorouter vs Garmin Pilot vs Rocketroute vs Foreflight. The use case was a round Europe trip starting from Lydd, Kassel, Billund, Gdansk, Annecy then back to Lydd. I assumed a P46T Meridian as I have performance profiles for that aircraft but I routed the flights at FL250 initially and again forcing the alitude to around FL100. Hopefully that will stop any performance based variables getting in the way.
Here is a table of results.
My suspicion that GP is just not implementing Autorouter very well is shown in the table. It failed to find a route for three destinations both low and high level. Maybe it is my iPad setup but I really can’t think how.
As for the other three, all did a reasonable job of routing but only Autorouter managed to be agile enough with level changes to get me across to Belgium and into the higher airways without some crazy routes from the other three.
I only repeated the Garmin pilot results low level as they were so bad higher up – no difference at all.
I think in summary, Autorouter, Rocketroute and Foreflight all have their own advantages and influence choices in other areas too. For example, if you buy Jepp plates through Foreflight you get three seats for around $750. Buying it any other way its 550 Euros so around $675 but with just one seat makes cockpit redundancy a challenge.
In particular, I would be interested in how others have found Garmin Pilot the Eurocontrol integration.
Good write-up although I think you may have some issues with your GP setup. Replicating your criteria for low level (FL100ish), I found the following with GP:
EGMD-EDVK: 45 seconds, 5%
EDVK-EKBI: 35 Seconds, 5% (the router only provided a SID to VFR solution)
EKBI- EPGD: No route found, 55 Seconds
EPGD-LFLP: 35 Seconds, 9%
LFLP-EGMD: 60 Seconds, 8%
Yes, thanks Dave, GP routing was so poor that I questioned the iPad setup but can’t see what setting would be incorrect. I will re-install the whole application and start again
I never got the routing and filing working properly in GP. I like it but have dropped it for FF now.
I don’t get that because Garmin license the AR.
Is there some issue we don’t know about?
Weird. Trying the EKBI-EPGD I get a sensible solution on AR but, with exactly the same criteria on GP, a “failed to find route”. I’m wondering whether GP doesn’t like long DCTs, in this case the ODN-RUMAR leg. Even so, it should tell you.
I re-installed GP on two iPads and it still fails to route most times for the Meridian. It does a better job with a simple C182 performance profile but still not great and frequently fails.
But the Meridian performance profile appears stored in the cloud and presents itself on connected devices. Maybe it is the performance profile I have created from the flight manual as that is common to all my routing attempts.
But then again, I am starting to feel “why bother?” when there are three other good options available…..
One problem is that you don’t actually have three independent working options…
You have Rocketroute (which seems to work very well, but is expensive), Autorouter (same, but is currently free), and the $300 Foreflight product (not sure if anyone has quite worked that one out yet). Garmin Pilot is the Autorouter but clearly there is some issue, and since Achim left (for the 6th time) and along with the other AR developer is boycotting EuroGA 
we aren’t likely to find out…
There is also MT Blitzplan – a much older product which became known many years ago for a custom made tablet.
Thank you very much for this comparison, Phil.
Interestingly, ForeFlight had a software update today which included the auto routeing function. The route that failed the other day came through with no problems, in about 7 seconds!
Like Dave, I updated today as well. The Route Advisor function is one if the areas that has received an update to so it may well have been improved for Eurocontrol. I entered the same departure and arrival airports as Dave and by the time I had entered an ETD it had found 7 very sensible routes. I like the background processing and evaluation of routes rather than fill in all the data and then wait.
