AI Powers New Jeppesen ForeFlight Features

Shortly after the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Jeppesen ForeFlight will release ClearNotams, an AI-powered translation of notams that makes them easier to interpret while preserving the raw language for verification and confirmation purposes. In another effort to tap into AI tools, Jeppesen ForeFlight has released ForeFlight AI Connector, a way for users to connect ChatGPT to ForeFlight for AI-assisted flight planning, and also part of ForeFlight’s new AI platform, called Airflow. Another new Jeppesen ForeFlight release is Scheduler, designed to help flight schools and independent instructors manage their businesses.

Making Notams Clearer

“Notams…the system as a whole has been sort of the butt of jokes for pilots for decades,” said Sam Taylor, senior product marketing manager, general aviation, “where it’s like, ‘did you read every single notam for that flight, all 300 of them?’ Notams are something that pilots have been frustrated with, and it’s annoying to try to brief all of these things when they look like they’re in this teletype font that was implemented back in the 1950s. We have tried to rectify that situation to the extent that we’re able with a capability that we’re calling ClearNotams.”

What ClearNotams does is run every notam in the ForeFlight system through an AI translation that is cross-checked for accuracy. For every notam that a user is viewing, the translation is front and center. However, for any notam that the system finds it can’t properly translate, ClearNotams will not show the translation but will show the original raw notam with a message, “ClearNotam not available.”

At the same time, the user can tap on any ClearNotam and view the original. “We want to make sure that every customer is comfortable with the idea that the ClearNotams do represent the original,” he said. “If for any reason they’re doubtful about that, or if they think maybe there’s some sort of information that’s missing, they can view the original source and see for themselves.”

In the rare case of an error in a ClearNotam, tapping on a button allows the user to send a report of a translation error. In that case, the ClearNotam will be swapped with the original notam. “Of course, if you find a translation error, you probably don’t want to see that translation anymore,” he explained.

The ForeFlight Mobile app will default to show ClearNotams first, with the source notams quickly available when necessary. But users can change the default so the original notams are shown first, if they prefer. “Some of our customers are probably going to be insistent that they don’t want to have anything to do with this AI stuff, and we want to respect that decision,” he said, “even though we do think that ClearNotams are a massive quality-of-life improvement.” In any case, if the user comes across a confusing notam, they can easily switch to see the ClearNotam version to help with interpretation.

ClearNotams also come with a filter button, one of the interface improvements that ForeFlight has added. This button enables filtering by notam category. An example would be to view all runway-related notams first. Notams can also be filtered by source, such as local, regional, or airspace notams. Filtering by activation time will eliminate expired or future notams that don’t affect the planned flight. Users can also filter by last-updated notams, which is convenient for evaluating new local notams and making sure the newest ones are flagged.

Another new feature is notam pinning, allowing the user to pin a notam so it moves to the top of the list. “There’s a lot of notams that are not very useful to you for a given flight,” Taylor said, “and there are some that are useful and important, and they tend to all be mixed around with each other. It’s easy to lose the important ones amid all of the unimportant ones. With pinning, as soon as you come across a notam that you want to make sure you can see again, when you pin it, it will always appear at the top of the list.” There is also a list of pinned notams that makes these easier to view.

On the other side of the pinning coin is notam collapsing, which reduces unimportant or familiar notams to one line. These don’t disappear, nor are they hidden, but become less prominent with a double-tap on the notam. “It kind of grays it out, so it’s a good indication that you don’t need to go read it again,” he said.

Whatever the users choose to do with ClearNotams carries through across all devices running ForeFlight, including inside briefings. Certainly, easier-to-understand notams will help during flight planning, but they can also be useful in flight, according to Taylor. During a recent flight, Cole Crawford, product lead for ClearNotams, had to divert to a different airport due to a mechanical problem. “Because all of these notams were translated,” Taylor said, “he was able to quickly scroll through a whole bunch of notams and understand what they were saying much more quickly and easily [compared to ordinary notams].

“We are excited about how customers respond to this,” he said. “I think it’s one of the most significant advancements we’ve made as far as how it will impact everyday pilots and how they plan and use the app.”

ClearNotam AI translation will be available only for premium-tier ForeFlight subscribers, but once it is released near the end of July, all individual customers will have access for three months to try the new features. However, all the other new notam features such as sorting, pinning, and filtering will be available to every ForeFlight user.

Connecting ForeFlight to ChatGPT

Jeppesen ForeFlight’s other move in the AI space is the ForeFlight AI Connector. “Technically, it is called an MCP, which is a model context protocol,” said Taylor. “It’s a way for a chatbot like ChatGPT to hook into different services and access data within those.”

Aviation uses for AI are flourishing, including apps such as PilotGPT and others, but the AI Connector is available for ForeFlight users at all subscription levels. It does require a ChatGPT account, but this can be the free service.

Available now, ForeFlight users can access the AI Connector by clicking on ChatGPT’s apps section and selecting and then signing into ForeFlight. Once signed in, the user can click the plus button in ChatGPT to start a new chat, then select ForeFlight Mobile and enter a prompt. Basically, the user is telling ChatGPT to answer a request using ForeFlight information.

A good way to try out the AI Connector is to ask, “Outline what the ForeFlight AI Connector can do.” Another simple test might be flight planning, such as “Plan a flight next Thursday from KCOS to KABQ in [N-number] and tell me the optimum time of day to depart and the best altitude to fly to keep my passengers comfortable.”

Another example would be to ask for help planning a flight with fuel stops every two hours, to accommodate passengers’ biological needs, plus one stop around lunchtime at an airport where there is a particular restaurant within a 10-minute drive. “That would be a pretty difficult thing to figure out, just within ForeFlight,” Taylor said. “It’s those more complex, very specific situations that would be a big headache to try to figure out on your own, but it only takes a couple of minutes with an AI assistant like this.

“ChatGPT is now going to use its normal thinking process and also look at this ForeFlight AI Connector and figure out what it can do using it,” Taylor said. “It can access airport information of all types, weather and forecasts, and notams; your flight information from your ForeFlight account; your aircraft within ForeFlight, including their performance profiles…and it can do performance planning. It can also access your logbook information.”

What ChatGPT can do with this information is limited. For example, while it can evaluate a potential flight, it can’t file a flight plan. “We probably won’t let it, because that’s something that a human should be in the loop for,” he said. It can also create draft logbook entries, but again, the human user is required to finalize a log entry. “We want to make sure that it can take actions that are not permanent or still require human review,” Taylor said. 

ForeFlight AI Connector is still in open preview, according to Taylor, “so this is still very much in development. We’re still tweaking it [and] adding new capabilities. We want people to use it, especially ForeFlight customers who are both pilots and interested in AI and who are already using ChatGPT. Those are the perfect audience for this, because they’re people who are looking for ways to leverage AI in their aviation life.”

Pilots who aren’t familiar with ChatGPT might also find the AI Connector useful, Taylor said. “We would love for them to do that. We’re eager to see what people do with this, and what kind of use cases they can discover, because there’s so much you can do with an AI like ChatGPT, and once you combine that with the ForeFlight information…there’s endless possibilities.”

“I’m excited to see what the community does with the AI connector,” said Jeppesen ForeFlight CEO Brad Surak. “I think we’re going to learn a lot together, with customers, about the power that the AI can bring. I’ve been playing with it, and it’s done some pretty cool things. It unleashes the creativity of our customers. I fly regularly, [and] it always is painful to read the notams ahead of a flight, and so I’m loving the ClearNotams.”

“What we’re doing with flight schools is pretty cool; we’re releasing the Scheduler app. CFIs have always been an important community for us, and what you’re going to see is an increase in our commitment to the flight schools, and the CFIs. [It] can help a single CFI managing her business, or could scale to a flight school with multiple locations, and that’s going to help ease the administrative burden.

“In the end, [we’re] focusing on things that make flying safer, make you smarter by reducing your cognitive load while you’re flying, and then make you faster, because you don’t have to do as much paperwork and administrative stuff. All of them are things that we’ve been thinking about for a long time, and when we had this ability to go faster, those are some of the top ideas that we wanted to get out.”