I bought a FF subscription to play around with it. Am not convinced yet of its advantages other than indeed the tight integration with the Jeppesen plates (which I do not have and will not buy). But always nice to play around with another app again of course. So far, I would still count on SkyDemon for the en route navigation. Any tips welcome.
I accidently activated the FF trial account on my iPad, so I copied in my planes’ profiles and played with it a little. It’s a neat package.
For this week-end’s flight the autorouting feature found me some very good and direct routes, and the indicator “Eurocontrol validated” was green for all legs.
However when it came time to actually file, no plan actually validated.
Back to autorouter (all routes validated) and SkyDemon.
I am wondering whether to renew the sub for another year. I never used it to file a flight plan but I thought it would be a good backup for the Autorouter. It doesn’t have the facility for shaping the route (around bad wx etc) but it does produce routes. If the Autorouter vanishes, a lot of us will be in big trouble. But if there is a problem with FP filing in FF, then it is pointless.
Do let us know what happened Arne.
Did you try filing one of the generated routes using another program?
I do use FF now for about 5 weeks in the performance plus version and the routing was like Arne described sometimes very good, once better then the autorouter. Filling was without any problems. And @Peter once I have imported an autorouter route and modified it in the flights section. And it worked also. What I like is the possibility to test-modify the altitude and get them validated within seconds.
The worst thing for me is, that working with vfr reporting points is a mess and when sending flightplans via FS510 to the panel they are lcked and have to be modified manually on the GTN.
Beside this I do use it meanwhile for the vfr flights too, because it is better then GP regarding FIS frequencies and vfr traffic patterns and it is working on the iPhone, Jeppesen Mobile Flightdeck VFR, my preferred planning app, does not. And the iPhone XS Max is really handy with FF in the cockpit. I hope the akquisition of Boeng will merge the two apps somewhen.
I don’t know if anybody mentioned this here before (because it’s very long thread) but you can’t use expired terminal charts (at least AIP charts) because application precludes this. I know it’s not (always/sometimes) smart to use expired plates but even expired ones are better than none, especially when you know nothing has changed for years. Few days ago I realized that (hard way) when I was already in the air. When I tried to open the approach plate, I got message “No coverage is installed on this device”. I realized that new cycle was released and I didn’t downloaded new charts. Luckily I had plates in PDF as backup but I was pretty surprised that the application decided instead of me what information I could have access to. In my opinion that’s very poor thinking by FF designers.
@Emir, are you sure, you have had downloaded the plates before? And not accidental deleted the expired?
Here I had a list of expired downloads, including the French Eurocontrol Terminal Charts.
Having a look into LFOB you still can see the old chart and send it to the Map
As soon as you open the Chart in Full View you can see the annotation “Expired” on top.
Always, when you run into trouble with ForeFlight please ask the guys who are able to help. Ask [email protected] 
On the topic of using FF vs SD in the US. Is there anyone that flew in the US and compared the 2? I am accustomed to the digital SD format and it would be easier to use SD than FF for that reason only. I am sure that FF is way ahead in the US. Was just wandering if someone actually compared the two solutions for flying in the US.
I gave it a thought, but FF is so much more natural to use in the US that I haven‘t used SD while flying there. Preparing a flight (FBOs, fuel prices, user comments, filing of flight plans)is much easier with FF.
When flying VFR in the US, FF’s rendition of the actual printed chart is crucial for the numerous printed captions, topography, and much else. For instance, Lake Mead, Just E of Las Vegas:
Vs.
Wolfgang_O wrote:
@Emir, are you sure, you have had downloaded the plates before? And not accidental deleted the expired?
You’re right – I accidentally deleted the charts. After successful download (of previous cycle) “Delete” button is enabled and I probably tapped it by accident. I repeated this today to confirm my mistake at that’s it.
