ForeFlight Mobile EFB

Overall the ForeFlight app has been incredible for the industry. It remains to be seen how the ownership changes effect the quality. I manage a corporate flight department and unlike many of my colleagues, I’m not making the full switch over to FF until I know the support and growth continues. The purpose of this review is specific to CFI support. FF wants us to recommend use of FF to our students and even goes so far as offering us “rewards” for doing so. What is truly lacking is full support for the instructors. We need to have the ability to print a PDF copy of the endorsements we have GIVEN. I can print a report of my experience/logbook with endorsements I have RECEIVED. I CANNOT print a copy of the endorsements I have given a student. It should not be that difficult to allow CFIs to go to instructor tools, endorsements and print a copy of all our endorsements. We are required to keep endorsements for 3 years (TSA-5 years). Currently we rely on the app not to crash or cloud to fail. We must have the ability to print a summary of our endorsements. I’ve made this request multiple times and ask CFIs I know to do the same. I always get the same response, “we are considering for future updates”. I do have high expectations especially when they want me to promote to my students and offer me rewards for doing so. Over the past 5 years I have recommended 34 pilots for checkrides from Sport pilot through CFII/MEI with a first time pass rate of 96%. I speak from experience, we should have the functionality to keep an additional record of our endorsements given.

When you have an Apple iPad, Multiple Garmin devices, and Foreflight… who do you call to get a straight answer in regard to “How does this Hardware and Software connect together?” Well, in my case I have 5th gen iPad mini running Foreflight software, a Garmin GNC 355, and I’d love to know if it’s worth the $8000 to buy a Garmin GNX 345. To be worth it, I would need to KNOW for certain that I could communicate both directions between the 355 GPS and the iPad / Foreflight AND also receive all of the ADS-B in as well as Weather from the GNX 345. Does Garmin who produces the $20K in avionics know… no they don’t, they directed me to Foreflight. Does the Avionics ship know… no they don’t, they direct me to Foreflight. When I look at Apple connecting multiple devices via multiple Bluetooth connections they say yes you can have multiple Bluetooth connections and then give an example of connecting multiple ear buds which will play a common source of music BUT that is not the same as connecting into two complex avionics with bi-directional communication on at least one of the two. Long story short, just send the question to Foreflight is my recommendation because within hours of me doing so, I had a response which said definitely that I could simultaneously connect both the GNC 355 and GTX 345 via Bluetooth to my iPad, transfer flight plans back and forth and also get the weather and ADS-B in traffic info through Foreflight…. Thank you Foreflight support team

We fly 12 to 18 hours per week with ForeFlight and Stratus 2. ForeFlight has come along way since it’s introduction with synthetic vision, excellent integration with Stratus and so much more. I did get concerned with the previous version as we started having multiple crashes on two different newer iPads daily. We do load multiple waypoint and it seemed like that might have been a factor? I always make sure my iPad has plenty of open SSD space and the newer iPads have 2GB or more RAM, so I wonder if the software rolled out too fast? We’re also very careful about not updating the OS until the all clear is given. I just hope ForeFlight’s team slows down a little on all the bells and whistles. It’s much more crucial for the product to work flawlessly versus having 3D views of airports / etc. All in all ForeFlight is the BEST aviation App on the market and their team is obviously awesome at coding. My concerns and comments here about previous crashes are only because we’re addicted to ForeFlight and never want to see it burdened with issues. The new version seems to be more stable with only the rare crash. It does open back up in seconds right were you left off. Keep up the good work. Thanks ForeFlight!