AIP chartes are useless, and lack harmonization. It is Jeppesen and the like that deliver the chart data for the G1000 and other IFR-approved navigation systems, including procedures, which include GNSS approaches and SID/STAR.
If some think that flying with a device featuring Jeppesen nav data and AIP approach charts adds to safety, they are welcome to do so. I will however continue to use Jeppesen on the G1000 (including chartview) and JeppFD on an iPad as a backup.
If there was anything fundamentally wrong with using non-AIP charts I do not think you would have most of the commercial GA use Jeppesen and we would certainly have heard about it.
AIP charts are absolutely not “useless”.
I agree that I prefer Jepp plates for their consistency, but AIP charts are perfectly usable, they just require a little more knowledge, flexibility and thinking. I have used AIP plates for most countries in Europe at one stage or another and never felt compromised. You just need to understand what you are doing.
They aren’t useless but I am sure that if Jepps were free, absolutely nobody would ever look at the AIP charts.
So it comes down to your personal attitude to how much you are willing to pay for what, versus a free but less good alternative.
Very few European private pilots pay the going rate for Jepp terminal charts, beyond a very small region. The pricing is just too steep.
The European CAAs could put Jepp out of business in Europe, simply by publishing their charts in A5 and with appropriately chosen fonts (like they do in the USA) but they choose not to.
Why exactly they choose not to remains an enduring mystery and when I sniffed around to find out I always got a stone wall, which obviously – as a businessman for 36 years – I find suspicious. One CAA guy did say he is “intimately familiar” with the Australian legal action (which was settled under an NDA so tight that not a single thing seems to have reached the press, even in Australia) so no prize for guessing what I think has happened.
IMHO the only thing Jepp “own” is a copyright on the “briefing strip”… possibly
Well, but then the European CAAs would have to have licence agreements with the avionics companies and they also would also have to establish a common standard/document format … I do not see how that will ever happen (in my lifetime).
I have all IFR and VFR charts from Jepp. And, yes, they are very expensive. On the other hand I would not want to have a modern plane without the charts on the MFD plus a backup on the iPad.
If I was in the CAA I would put together a meeting of the other CAAs and bang some heads together, to create terminal charts which are
Prob99, 99% of pilots who actually fly would pay the tenner a year.
The only people who would then pay for Jepps would be
)Currently, most people whose panel mounted avionics are theoretically capable of displaying terminal charts (Jepp or Jepp) are letting their sub expire at the first anniversary, and they carry on with an Ipad.
What they have on the Ipad depends, and there are various options, with various, ahem, levels of legality 
However I think that if the European CAAs did the above, Jepp would drop their prices massively – exactly as they have done in the USA!
eMail, are you serious? I would never register for a service that send me eMails. Why not send me a telegram? :-)
Ten dollars per year? Do you understand that Jeppensen is not a part of the Red Cross? You have any idea what an operation they need to keep that data up top date and correct.
If I add up all costs then the JeppView subscription is not a small item but it really does not make that much of a difference. I do think that Jepp is pretty expensive and that the price should be reduced, but I think that $ 350 per year for all IFR/VFR charts of Europe is more realistic than “$ 10”
No – the CAAs have to publish the data anyway, under their ICAO obligations.
They merely choose to publish it in a particular form.
It would not cost them any more to publish it in a usable form – as has been done in the USA.
I am not talking about Jepp getting €10/year. I am talking about the CAAs.
Jepps, incidentally, lift their data from the AIPs and redraft it. What they do is not cheap to do, sure, but their business model is wholly based on the ICAO-compliance data being of poor quality. Just because a business activity is expensive to conduct doesn’t mean that it has an intrinsic value
What Jepps do is equivalent to me setting up an expensive business to publish a catalogue of all Socata TB aircraft, in a beautiful leather bound volume, with photos of the aircraft collected by a paid team of photographers…
The thing that annoys me about the AIP charts is that in some countries, including the UK, they don’t publish the actual approach minima. Does anyone know why they don’t?
Yes, I know you can work them out or, if you’re lazy like me use Sjord’s excellent IFR minima app, but doing so is a potential source of error especially if some of the information you need to do that such as the nature of the runway lighting is difficult to find or to interpret.
Jepps, incidentally, lift their data from the AIPs and redraft it. What they do is not cheap to do, sure, but their business model is wholly based on the ICAO-compliance data being of poor quality. Just because a business activity is expensive to conduct doesn’t mean that it has an intrinsic value
What Jepps do is equivalent to me setting up an expensive business to publish a catalogue of all Socata TB aircraft, in a beautiful leather bound volume, with photos of the aircraft collected by a paid team of photographers…
That’s not exactly true. Jeppesen has created a worldwide standard for these charts, and especially for IFR I really prefer that standard over having to re-learn reading and understanding the various formats. And I think THAT IS of value to many pilots. From day 1 i have always used Jeppesen charts. And I would never go back to the AIPs
I agree, but the value (which you correctly describe, as the current situation) is based on the AIPs being of poor / inconsistent quality.
My leather bound volume is a bad example because nobody would want to read it anyway, but there probably are many other examples of data which is of value to enough people and which does exist but in a poor form, and somebody sets up a business collating it and cleaning it up.
Such a business is obviously vulnerable to the generator of the original data waking up and cleaning up his act. One obvious example is the Pooley’s (a UK airport guide) business, which is vulnerable to the UK CAA publishing the data in one PDF, for free.
In this case, I think Jepp’s business model is very secure indeed – even if for reasons which are not wholly transparent
