Story ID: 311
APG Adds Flight Planning with iPreFlight Genesis
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: APG is growing its services with the addition of flight planning to its performance app.
Word Count: 316
Aircraft Performance Group (APG, Booth B733) launched its new flight-planning app—iPreFlight Genesis—at last year’s NBAA show. Genesis picks up where APG’s iPreFlight app leaves off, adding a new flight-planning engine to iPreFlight’s weight-and-balance and runway analysis modules.
With Genesis, pilots, dispatchers, and flight operations staffers can plan and file a flight plan after loading up the airplane and evaluating runway performance capabilities, which include takeoff and landing data for that particular airplane. The analysis shows the departure procedure for each runway and the weight limits calculated by APG’s Max Payload Estimator.
Genesis optimizes the flight plan based on winds and temperatures aloft using the SelectRoute tool, which also offers recently cleared and preferred routes. Genesis has an autorouter that automatically plots the route based on the aircraft settings. For example, a non-RNAV-capable aircraft won’t be given a flight plan that it can’t fly, or an aircraft without life rafts won’t be given an overwater route.
The flight planning capability is available when the app is not connected to the internet, and in this case, Genesis taps its historical weather database to help the user determine whether the route can be flown and to provide an overall view of the trip.
A key benefit of Genesis is the ability to change parameters and see how those affect the flight. If the user started with a dry runway, for example, that can be changed to wet, and this instantly updates all of the modules (weight-and-balance, runway analysis, and flight planning). Genesis is capable of planning international trips and also determines valid tracks for ocean crossings or calculates the route if flying above the tracks. Genesis also provides a graphical view of SIDs and STARs to help the user see which one might be optimal for the planned route.