ForeFlight Performance Planning Goes Live

Following its purchase of Denmark-based flight-planning engine developer AviationCloud in 2015, ForeFlight has released its performance flight-planning service, which provides flight planning for high-performance aircraft from piston-powered singles through jets. The new Performance Plus service adds a third tier to ForeFlight’s subscription plans, and it costs $299.99 per year for individual users. For multi-pilot flight departments, the new features are part of the Business Performance package, which costs $300 per seat per year. 

Thanks to AviationCloud, ForeFlight Performance Plus lets users plan flights anywhere in the world. AviationCloud was founded by Kim Lantz and employs a team of doctorate-level programmers to provide flight-planning services to trip-support and flight-planning companies. AviationCloud still provides these services to third-party companies while also creating the foundation for ForeFlight’s new capabilities.

Also included in the new Performance Plus/Business Performance service level is integration with JetFuelX contract fuel prices. ForeFlight purchased JetFuelX early last year. 

With the full integration of AviationCloud flight planning, the ForeFlight procedure advisor will now work worldwide, although some functionality is waiting on the planned integration with Jeppesen charts, which could happen as early as this month. ForeFlight also recently announced integration of Jeppesen global high-resolution terrain and obstacle data in all ForeFlight service levels. This means that ForeFlight’s synthetic vision view is supported worldwide by the Jeppesen data.

Complex Airspace Requirements

Adding AviationCloud capability in ForeFlight was necessary because of the complexity of airspace outside the U.S., especially in Europe. According to Andy Maag, ForeFlight executive vice president of product, Eurocontrol publishes 20,000 constraints in European airspace four times a day, and flight-planning software must take all of these constraints into account. 

When planning a flight in Europe, a pilot can use a Eurocontrol-proposed route, or select the most efficient route, and ForeFlight can plot that route according to those constraints, based on the performance of the aircraft.

The new version of ForeFlight includes hundreds of performance profiles for a variety of airplanes, incorporating aircraft manufacturer climb, cruise and descent performance. On top of that, the performance models also consider various altitudes, weights and temperatures so that the pilot can choose from a list of possible altitudes to find the most efficient in terms of speed and fuel burn. Users can also customize the profiles and add or modify weight and fuel data. 

ForeFlight has simplified the app’s interface, consolidating the former File & Brief view into a cleaner looking single-form view called Flights. This now includes route information, payload calculations, and fuel planning. The payload calculator provides a quick view of structural weight limits to help pilots see if there will be an issue with an overweight takeoff and landing.

To help pilots assess fuel requirements, the new Performance Plus provides multiple fuel policies to suit the mission. These include minimum fuel required, extra fuel (user’s discretion), maximum fuel (to max ramp weight), landing fuel (user-defined amount) and manual fuel (completely user-defined).

Within the Flights view, Route Advisor and Altitude Advisor can help the pilot decide on the optimum route or altitude, based on wind-optimized routing from AviationCloud calculations. The top choice is the AviationCloud autoroute, which is the most efficient, but the user can select from a list of options, including recently cleared ATC routes. All of this planning can also be done offline.

Another new feature in the Flights interface is a detailed navlog, which can be printed. In addition to all of the typical waypoint information, the navlog includes a range of bracketed altitudes based on the forecast weather as well as a summary of fuel and weights and a section for notes on flight times and other information. 

ForeFlight’s weather briefing tool is available in the Flights section, as is a button to file the flight plan directly into the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network. 

ForeFlight users can access the new Performance Plus features on Apple iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches. Annual subscriptions include a license for a single user for the app on one iPad, one iPhone, one iPod Touch, and one backup iPad. All of the new features are also integrated with ForeFlight’s web-based flight planning system, which is included in all subscription levels.