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Garmin Pilot v Foreflight

I posted these posts in COPA but as I fly in Europe I thought I would get the perspectives of the people on this forum?

I did my FAA IR using only Garmin Pilot. When I was flying in the US I saw no reason to use any other flight bag. You had everthing you could want at your fingertips.

Flying in Europe seems to be another matter. In particular the filing of flight plans is very clubersome and relies on AutoRouter as the engine producing the flight plans. Still love all the other bits of Garmin Pilot (automatic log books, integration with Perspective plus, Jepp charts, live weather etc.)

This is a very big issue – flight planning!

For this reason I am going to try to run the next month in parrallel. Garmin Pilot and Foreflight.

SECOND POST TO UPDATE:

Ok I thought I would give an update on my ‘months parrallel run’ of Garmin v Foreflight.

I have had routes from:

EGKB – LOWZ and back

EGKB – LSZL and back

EGKB – EGGP and back (twice)

… since 17th Feb using both flight bags.

Here are my initial thoughts:

1) Planning – In Europe ForeFlight wins hands down on IR flight plans. While this seems like a fundamantal point its just that Garmin is so bad that Foreflight needs to produce workable routes only 50% of the time to win on this front. And it does. However Foreflight is still very poor. Here is why… Routes apparently are Eurocontrol Valid and then turn out not to validate when submitted, changing an off blocks time cancels a flight plan, cancelled flight plans have still been in the Eurocontrol system etc… Frankly neither is very good at all.

One of these two companies needs to get this right. Using RocketRoute (at the same price as one of these flight bags) or AutoRouter (for free) just seems to be a clumsy alternative. After trying to use Foreflight for these 4 flights above I have lost the will to live and resorted to AutoRouter for tomorrows flight!

Niether are good enough for a frequent IFR flyer in Europe. Garmin was great for me in the US and cant comment on ForeFlight in the US.

2) Mapping – functionality not much different – personal look and feel preferences will mainly lead this choice as its swings and roundabouts. Personally for me Garmin but that may be as I am more used to it.

3) Logbook – Garmin hands down with its integration to Engine data etc. Foreflight if frankly very poor here on basic functionality like looking at your log entries !

4) There are a number of things that really will come down to look and feel preferences and not actual functionality – Synthetic vision, Terrain, Charts, file access in Dropbox, scratch pad, airport data etc. They both do the job and its not a difference

5) Integration to avionics in the SR22T Perspective plus – Garmin hands down. Engine data, flight plans, weather, traffic etc. A massive pull for Garmin for those in a Cirrus.

6) Things like mass and balance and Checklists also appear to be much better in Garmin.

Frankly after 10 days of trying to use both Garmin is the clear winner on the things that matter – other than flight plans in Europe. But then ForeFlight is only better as Garmin is so poor…

My view is Garmin plus AutoRouter for this in Europe. I am seriously considering RocketRoute as they seem to produce consistently the bettter plans… but why do web have to pay the same as a full flight bag? Also can RocketRoute not come up with a better solution than to copy and paste flight plans from text into Garmin Pilot so that you can upload to your avionics? Some routes are too long for the text they send so you can even just use the text as they sugggest on their web site! Even AutoRoute (free) does this with one click!

Last Edited by SierraNovember at 02 Mar 14:52
The sky is the limit
EGKB, United Kingdom

First of all, if you now fly mostly in Europe, I recommend you stop comparing (in your head) the US and Europe with regards to these things. The US is a different world in terms of the framework, the system and the market. Europe is different, and it has proven useful to bet on European products for these things.

Both Gamin Pilot and Foreflight are US products which have been minimally adopted for European usage – with generally poor results. By the way, for flight plans, Garmin Pilot uses a somewhat crude adoption of the autorouter engine. ForeFlight uses another former third party product for routing.

1) Planning – In Europe ForeFlight wins hands down on IR flight plans.

I can’t really comment on that, but generally, the results are hugely dependent on the settings/aircraft profile that YOU have to dilligently enter into the software. Creating flight plans in Europe is an IT exercise, not really a flighgplanning exercise. The good old “shit in, shit out” principle totally applies.

Routes apparently are Eurocontrol Valid and then turn out not to validate when submitted,

No, that actually very rarely happens in Europe. The Eurocontrol IFPS is the one and only checking instance, so once you are past that, the flightplan is in the system. What sometimes happens is that the filed routing contravenes some ATC routing policies (in theory, these should all be lodged with Eurocontrol, but in practice, this doesn’t always happen), and then you get a re-routing from ATC, but they will not invalidate your flightplan as such (again, with very rare exceptions).

changing an off blocks time cancels a flight plan,

Nope. What some programs offer is anticipating a flightplan EOBT, and that can only be done by canceling and refiling.

Generally, the standalone autorouter is still consiederd the best for filing (but again, you need to set it up properly and can’t ask it and Eurocontrol things that are technically not possible). But yes, autorouter is not really in in-flight app. So in short, you won’t have a one-stop shop for everything here in Europe. Get on with it.

Transferring flightplans to avionics is another complex story. Depending on the software / hardware combination, it works well or less so.

Still, GP and FF work somewhat decently for pure IFR use. Things get even more complicated when you take occasional VFR flights (or even IFR OCAS flights in the UK) into the equation. At that point, both GP and FF really start to fail (mostly due to their too crude proprietary charting technology, which hasn’t been optimised for Europe). To improve on that, you will additiionally need something like Skydemon or EasyVFR (both totally engineered by Europeans). So again, it will not be a one stop shop. Try things out and find the combination of tools that works best for you. This may actually change from year to year, because there is a lot of dynamics in the technology.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 02 Mar 15:56
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

ForeFlight Europe is indeed making dramatic progress during the last months and there are only a few thing left, before it has the potential to gain similar market share to the US. Yes, the programming staff of ForeFlight is still learning how the European peculiarities work, but so far they solved every issue in a much more general framework compared to the European market players. I wonder how the situation will be in two years from now?

We have seen so many moving map navigation tool come and go, maybe we get some kind of stability now. Remark, I see this change mainly connected to VFR flying. And yes, I see it will be hard to impossible to beat Achims so well done free Autorouter for European IFR flights.

My input on this is quite narrow since I don’t use either app. I have used Foreflight – the web version – for testing the IFR planning.

Garmin Pilot licenses the Autorouter API and does Eurocontrol autorouting.

Foreflight uses a service from a European company they bought (Aviation Cloud) which does Eurocontrol autorouting but some features essential for light GA IFR are as yet missing; the main one being the ability to shape the route by specifying fly-by waypoints. When they do that, and a few small fixes, it will become usable for IFR.

Overall, the view expressed in recent years is that Garmin Pilot development has been abandoned, 2-3 years ago. Whereas Foreflight is working on their product at a good pace.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

the view expressed in recent years is that Garmin Pilot development has been abandoned, 2-3 years ago

GP releases have focused on the integration with the Garmin panel stuff. The latest example being the engine monitoring TxI which automatically downloads all the info onto your tablet and allows you to graph parameters, in flight; and Database Concierge, which is an excellent feature (although I find transfer times for charts are way too long).

It’s not particularly helpful to most pilots and does mean the product is lagging in planning and other aspects, but it ties people to Garmin. They’ve learned their lesson from Apple, I guess; creating an ecosystem is the best way to extract maximum value, long term, from your customers.

Last Edited by denopa at 02 Mar 16:39
EGTF, LFTF

Thanks for the comments and thoughts so far.

@boscomantico : I don’t agree with your sweeping statement European products work best in Europe. I am not going to give you examples but just look around the tech in your house, car, in your hands and perhaps even the device you typed this response on … if you see even a majority that are European I will be surprised! Notwithstanding I can fully agree with you that the complexities of Europe’s airspace and systems has not been grasped by these two American companies. BTW I am not American or European so have not axe to grind.

It does not hold that it will remain like this. Much more complex technology systems have established themselves as globally pervasive (both from Europe into US and vice versa) if the user demand and experience is there. I am merely expressing this demand and will not ‘just fit in’. But I will get on with it as you suggest in the interim and use substandard product while seeking solutions that improve my substandard plight! If better exists I will point to it and quote it – America’s system is simply better.

With regard to the routes being invalidated when submitted and removed when block times are changed – All I can tell you is that it happened. Saying it did not does not change that fact. Perhaps its evidence of your primary point that these American company’s tech is not yet integrating properly with the EuroControl tech

I totally agree with you on VFR. Have been using SkyDemon since my PPL.

@Peter – It would be a shame if Garmin had stopped developing. I think @denopa may be right though. I see quite a bit of development on integration with avionics (engine data, flight plans, database upgrades, weather data link etc.) – building a flight ‘platform’ that has you committed to their product. Unfortunately this approach does not focus on flight planning at is centre. Perhaps therefore for a period we will have to endure the separate flight planning – rocketroute or autorouter. I still feel that if either Garmin or ForeFlight get this right they are going to steal market share.

@dejwu – I agree that Foreflight are making massive strides and in some ways I like the David v Goliath angle. The other big point is that Garmin do so many things (running, cycling, navigation in general etc.) but ForeFlight do one (e-flight bag). Foreflight are also very very responsive. I had trouble getting a few flight plans to validate and I literally got proactive emails from their support team asking me to make manual changes as their software had a glitch and that’s why it would not work. They did this during the 30min I was trying to get the plan to validate. This is very impressive and very like a small company trying to disrupt. I love this and therefore feel some emotional desire to want to see them succeed. However it still does not change the fact that if you have Garmin avionics and fly mainly in Europe their product is still some way off in my view. Love that they see Europe as a market to crack and are investing in it. They have lots to learn but the ambition is brillant.

Very interesting conversation and thanks for all the thoughts.

Last Edited by SierraNovember at 02 Mar 17:48
The sky is the limit
EGKB, United Kingdom

I’ve tried them all. Literally.

For me Foreflight is the app of choice but it needs to be recognised that I operate about 50% of my flight time in the Middle East and the rest of the time across Europe, mostly IFR. I’ve never had a Eurocontrol filing problem with Foreflight but would support previous arguments that must-fly waypoints would be a significant step forward.

For the contenders, I like the graphical NOTAMs on SkyDemon, some of Garmin’s FPL options (mostly associated with Autorouter) and the GENDEC/GAR capability of RocketRoute. Pretty much all of these should be relatively easy to emulate.

Foreflight seem to be the only ones who are making noticeable steps forward. SkyDemon have had the market for a number of years and have traditionally brought regular enhancements, although I’m starting to feel they have slowed-down, other than their electronic conspicuity work.

Fly safely
Various UK. Operate throughout Europe and Middle East, United Kingdom

I think the smartphone revolution has shown that people with money (and anybody who flies must have some) are willing to pay for convergence.

And conversely people with money (and most of them hate wasting time; I have just wasted an hour of my life on the Garmin website trying to update a Garmin GPS, and unsuccessfully updating an email address) will abandon multiple products which fail to simplify their life. Witness the rapid demise of pocket cameras (and so much else).

Garmin Pilot might be brilliant for interacting with their panel mount boxes but if it fails to do the essential VFR and IFR stuff, it will eventually be consigned in the bin.

So Foreflight are right to work on producing a “universal” VFR+IFR tool, which can also load flight plans into panel mount boxes. Whether they will succeed I have no idea. Skydemon are now seeing the writing on the wall if they let their lead slip, so they cannot afford to be too arrogant. Their earlier scare was Jepp MFDVFR but that product – best Euro VFR mapping ever though it has – has not gone anywhere because it was abandoned functionality-wise some years ago, and it is too expensive for the VFR market.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

SierraNovember wrote:

America’s system is simply better.

Sure but not an apples to apples comparison. The USA is one country. For Europe, the EU alone is 28 (about to be 27), plus the rest. Sure, there is EASA and Eurocontrol vs FAA (for both reg & ATC), but in Europe both are subject to local (i.e. national) sand in the gears. Comparing a single EU country to the USA would be fairer, but a given national market for a product like either of these would never be economic anyway.

LSZK, Switzerland

I find ForeFlight quite useable except for the routing. I find the W&B very intuitive, as is chart integration including BYOP.

Integration with Autorouter is simple for generating a route and transferring it to FF. Autorouter has been so bullet-proof for me, that any alternative for FPL validation, submission, and updating would need to be well proven before I’d consider changing. Today, it’s unbeatable with its Telegram, SMS, and email functionality.

I use Avidyne rather than Garmin, and FF has the panel integration that Garmin Pilot will never have for that equipment.

LSZK, Switzerland
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