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ForeFlight (merged thread)

achimha wrote:

Funny how ForeFlight are following Garmin Pilot’s lead on several things:

Following Garmin Pilot’s lead is natural on hardware integrations when ForeFlight partners with Garmin. Even there, we have the feature that approaches may be loaded from ForeFlight and sent to the panel or visa versa, whereas Garmin Pilot has not chosen to implemented this, at least as of yet.

Major features take quite some time to go from requirement to product offering and in many of the cases you sited where underway at ForeFlight before Garmin Pilot announced the feature, so it would be more proper to say in some cases that Garmin Pilot was ahead of ForeFlight, rather than providing leadership. ForeFlight has features that it had prior to Garmin Pilot and visa versa. Both products have unique features. ForeFlight also works with other vendors hardware such as Avidyne, FreeFlight, Appareo, Aspen, and Sirius XM.

KUZA, United States

I very much welcome Foreflight’s entry into the European market. In my opinion, it’s user interface is superior to the competition’s. I’m looking forward to be able to use it on my IFR flights. All it needs now is Eurocontrol autorouter integration…

NCYankee wrote:

But to get worldwide data driven maps, one needs to purchase one of the “plus” plans. Basic Plus is $99. Pro Plus is $199.

So I just spent $199 and now I have worldwide navdata. It doesn’t mention it anywhere and it’s certainly not polished for the European market yet. There is no high resolution terrain outside the US. The navdata seems dubious to me, it’s not Jeppesen ARINC-424 as I immediately spotted some airports that no longer exist and others that do exist but are not known to Jeppesen. Must be some other source. Airspaces are also different with some bogus stuff in Germany that I saw. The whole airspace of Cyprus is called “Akrotiri Sovereign Base Area” which points to some US Military source for the navdata. Also noticed that the navdata used to resolve flight plans is inconsistent with the data shown on the map (a DME is known to the flight plan parser but not to the map).

Is the rain radar overlay in Europe real radar data licensed from a radar source or some GFS approximation (= useless)?

NOTAM data is also not from European sources (= Eurocontrol EAD) which means NOTAMs are missing and some US military only NOTAMs are present for airports in Europe. That is insufficient.

It doesn’t look useable just yet but certainly on its way. Good news for European pilots!

Last Edited by achimha at 06 May 16:27

Funny how ForeFlight are following Garmin Pilot’s lead on several things

Maybe I am out of SOH today but why is this funny?

They might even follow Garmin’s usage of your and Tom’s autorouter

Good news for European pilots!

Indeed, especially if the android version has full functionality in Europe (which GP doesn’t have).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Indeed, especially if the android version has full functionality in Europe (which GP doesn’t have).

ForeFlight does not have an Android version and last time I asked, there are no plans to ever produce one. The US pilot population seem to be a happy island of 100% iOS market share. In the rest of the world, the situation is very different. Hints from SkyDemon show estimates of about 50/50 iOS vs Android which still means European aviation is an iOS stronghold because iOS market share is more like 16% nowadays (counting the zillions of low end Android phones as well which GA pilots usually wouldn’t buy).

Peter wrote:

They might even follow Garmin’s usage of your and Tom’s autorouter

ForeFlight acquired the company AviationCloud last year which is a spin off from AirSupport, developers of the venerable PPS which has been around forever and is still used widely by biz jet operators and small airlines. AviationCloud has autorouting technology.

It must be very frustrating for an established US vendor to look at European aviation and realize that the job is a lot more difficult than in the US while the market/opportunity is so much smaller. However, once you’ve reached peak market share in a non growing market (ForeFlight started at 100% market share, grew with tablet adoption and is now facing competition), you have to look for opportunities to grow. Another consideration is that there is sector of the market that operates Gulfstreams and Falcons and those people do cross continents.

Last Edited by achimha at 06 May 17:38

Doesn’t it say all this happens during the summer. Maybe the switchover hasn’t happened yet.

EGTK Oxford

ForeFlight 9.2 was just released. It includes the Jeppesen Nav Data and Jeppesen Approach Charts as an option. It does not yet include the Jeppesen Enroute charts Hi or Lo or VFR charts. There is a base map with world wide nav data and regional hi resolution terrain information. Filing is not yet supported in Europe.

KUZA, United States

Another article

Is there any indication that Foreflight will have the Jeppesen MFD-VFR (their ~€300+ / year Ipad VFR nav product) charts?

IMHO these are the best VFR charts for Europe; a pity the only platform they run on is so pricey and is going to capture so little market due to that. It is also feature-crippled which upsets many pilots who like to see an app packed with every imaginable feature (and most of them don’t ever learn it).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The Jeppesen VFR product is completely separate and not related to what ForeFlight, Garmin and others license and use.

I don’t think Jeppesen MFD-VFR has much to offer that SkyDemon doesn’t do today.

Well, it has maps which don’t rely on the precise details of the program config…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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