It seems to me that almost all countries in Europe publish both VFR charts, IFR charts and approaches in their AIP’s, accessible online. There might be ones still only publishing them in printed form, this I don’t know. Unfortunately they all do them in their own weird format and they’re either impenetrable, useless or very hard to fly unless you’re used to them.
But surely, there must be a business or a way to interpret all these, reformat them into standardised VFR charts and standardised approach plates and sell as an app or as part of a Foreflight/Skydemon. Ideally into something like most people are familiar with – either FAA style, or Jeppesen style. Once the initial groundwork of converting is done, then it shouldn’t be very labor intensive to update these as they change. How many people would it take to gather all the European countries AIP’s and turn them into something useful?
It seems like there’s an opportunity to give Jeppesen and their extortionate prices a run for the money here. Or why hasn’t this been done?
Probably because it is too expensive. Hence Jeppesen. Remember Foreflight in the US uses the govenment (same as AIP) charts. The market is small.
How many people would it take to gather all the European countries AIP’s and turn them into something useful?
Isn’t that exactly what SkyDemon and PocketFMS already do?
I thought Adam meant to convert each county’s chart into the same format.
Euro Control tried to do this with VFR 500k charts a few years ago but creating a standard style. A few countries got on-board but not that many.
Isn’t that exactly what SkyDemon and PocketFMS already do?
Navbox, PFMS and SD (in alpha order) have, over years, put together their own VFR airspace databases, from various sources, starting in some cases with the US DAFIF data (blocked in 2006, following copyright action by European CAAs). A lot of work has gone into this and each of them has done it alone. They inevitably all contain errors and the oldest ones will have the fewest errors in the least busy VFR airspaces… But these are VFR products which following standard PPL training (paper chart, map, stopwatch etc) can carry a disclaimer saying that if you kill yourself they aren’t liable.
As regards pushing out Jepp:
(same with reverse engineering software, etc).So… not only the market shrinks as you go down the list but also the barriers to entry are too high.
IMHO it would take a huge investment and the attacker would need to go for the professional aviation and panel mount markets i.e. aim at wiping out Jepp totally. I am not saying it can’t be done (I am sure Bill Gates could fund it) but I doubt anybody would have the stomach for it.
There are also other providers, such as Navtech and LIDO, who compared to Jepp are bloody rubbish. Navtech reputedly charge 1/3 of what Jepp so, and are comparatively bloody rubbish. Only when you use a competitor do you realise why Jepp have the position they do.
Much of the data Jepp publish is not found in the AIPs e.g. what they call “text pages”
How do you come to that conclusion?
How do you come to that conclusion?
By flying a bit, here and there, not much really, not anywhere near as much as you do…
Jepp stuff is not wholly based on the AIPs. No aviation software vendor can do that – the product would be very poor, for most countries. Maybe all except Germany whose AIP is presumably perfect.
Only when you use a competitor do you realise why Jepp have the position they do.
It takes a lot of work to produce an accurate guide to anything, when much of the source material comes from people who don’t give a damn. The problem gets worse the further south you go in Europe. For example if the AIP collator sends some form to an airport asking for phone fax and email details, and the person at the airport doesn’ give a damn, the AIP will be full of rubbish. Then, if you have a decent revenue stream, you could pay somebody to actually check the data (phone the number and see if anybody answers for example) and anyway you should accept duff-data reports from customers, but then you have another bigger problem: you have to create a tag like “unreliable data here” in your database and when the next AIP cycle comes out you have to re-check it. I have in the past reported duff phone numbers (etc) to software providers but they can’t do much about it because eventually they have to accept the corrected data will get washed out by later AIP data. The solution is to more or less run your own version of the AIP data which nobody is doing to do. Hence we get farcical situations where e.g. the main contact number for “operations” is the public one for Joe Public checking Easyjet airline departure times
Jepp terminal charts are of high quality which is why almost everybody flies with them.
