Is the European FF product different from the US one?
The underlying FF product is not regional. FF is downloaded from the Apple store and there is only one.
What is different is the coverage, and I suspect that is what you meant with the question.
FF staff are best to answer the question, but due to various differences in data sources and options there are differences in what is and can be presented by the app varying on the geography being flown.
This is really clear if one takes a look at the FF web site and the purchase options. Their web site is very well done. Just do a search for Europe under support. For example, one buys a minimum of one geo coverage with additional ones optional at extra charge. One just ticks the boxes to get the desired coverage. Up until a year or so ago, there was only US and/or Canada as options. US coverage uses FAA data, Canada uses NavCanada data (i.e. the IAP etc formats are different due to different sources). Jeppesen coverage is separate. If one has a Jepp sub, it can be added to FF with each FF use taking a Jepp device out of the count pool. Or the Jepp sub can be ordered via FF in which case it is useable on all 3 FF devices (2x ipads + iphone). Up until FF released specific Europe coverage, the only way to get Europe navdata was with a Jepp add-on to the selected US and/or Canada FF base coverage(s). Since FF added Europe as a coverage option (in addition to US and Canada), they added features which, while available to all, are of specific interest to Europe users. The navdata is the from the publicly available national AIP data from Eurocontrol so Swiss and German VAPs are a chargeable add-on like with EasyVFR or SD but all IAPs are available according to the various national formats (UK vs FR vs DE vs …). If you’ve been following, you’ll have seen that FF started in 2017 with a limited Europe country coverage and have been gradually adding features & countries as part of new app releases (ie no subscription change). The current list of supported countries is maintained as mentioned above on their web site. I have seen a FF installation with Europe subscription and there are some differences vs a FF subscription with US or Canada as the base coverage plus Jepp Europe coverage (but no Europe-specific subscription), beyond the obvious current geo coverage for navdata.
Peter wrote:
Is the European FF product different from the US one?
Hi Peter,
@chflyer is right. There is a single ForeFlight application. There are some differences between what those who select Europe and those who select the U.S. or Canada region for their subscription will see – namely additional VFR data supplied by Jeppesen for Europe found on the Aeronautical Map layer. There are also some differences in what simply inputing a European aerodrome into a flight plan for any user will do as well like the ability to do route generation as compared with the U.S. or Canada which is often supplied with routes by ATC. There are also small things that have been added over time like additional units of measurement and backend items to ensure filing and routing reliability that don’t get mentioned in release notes as often. We also have some features slated for the first half of the year that are of specific interest to European pilots and some that are global needs inspired by the needs of Europeans in multiple areas of the application.
Now between the web and the mobile application there are some bigger differences due to the inclusion of inflight specific features + log book, checklists, etc.
Headed out to do some flying – CAVOK here!
Josh
There is a single ForeFlight application
I believe this is at the root of why it is creating so much work for you to deal with Europe and the – of necessity, forced on us by The Establishment – different ways in which both VFR and IFR flight is done here.
I have previously suggested ways to deal with some of it in the IFR autorouting sphere while “not changing anything for the Americans which is by far the bigger market” e.g. EGKA RESIA LDLO and then autorouting would treat RESIA as a fly-by waypoint (whereas currently it silently discards it) and maybe there are ways to do all of it with just the one app.
Certainly routing is an area still needing some work vs autorouter. Autorouter will give me various altitude/FL changes during a routing, to allow route optimization. FF seems to just give me on alt/FL for the entire trip, which won’t ever work. Perhaps I’m missing something in FF. (BTW, I have an FF sub with Canada & Jepp All-Europe VFR/IFR sub rather than a Europe sub. I don’t need the Eurocontrol AIP stuff in addition to Jepp, and coverage is anyway limited vs Jepp att).
Since Josh is checking in here regularly, I would like to make a small request to ForeFlight to include a few FAA publications in the basic subscription and not just limit them to the USA coverage.
Specifically, I’m referring to the following:
Instrument Flying Handbook
Instrument Procedures Handbook
AIM
While obviously USA-centric, these documents contain a wealth of information that is not limited to the US. Just one example is all the navigation technology information in the AIM.
That’s quite easy with the new Content Pack feature. Download the manuals from the faa.gov webpage and add them to a content pack. If you have a Pro Plus subscription or higher, you can also use the Cloud Documents feature for adding your own pdf documents.
And the easiest way is to send the document to your iPad via Airdrop.
@chflyer Appreciate the feedback! I’ll look into it to see what I can find out. I’d be interested to gauge the interest of the room on this because the approach we have taken in the past with these types of documents is to do by region to avoid any confusion or frustration as to why they might see FAA or NavCanada docs when they have a Europe subscription.
@Wolfgang_O is right. Currently you can use Content Packs or Cloud Documents to import these docs. Another way is to find the PDFs of these on the FAA site and open them. Once open, hit the share button and you should see an option to Copy to ForeFlight that will import the document. In the Documents datalog, you will see a new section called imported which will show you any document that has come in outside of ForeFlight.
Thanks again for the feedback,
Josh
Is it just me or is the “winds aloft” layer missing from the ForeFlight web application?
The web application has quite some pieces missing …
