Story ID: 090Nov18
ForeFlight Users Tap Pre-departure Clearances
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: Pilots can receive IFR clearances as text and email messages when using the ForeFlight Mobile app.
Word Count: 919
“We’re continuously bringing new enhancements and features to the marketplace,” said Stephen Newman, ForeFlight executive v-p of sales and marketing. To that end, ForeFlight is showing two key new technologies at its NBAA booth (4854), including pre-departure clearances and new Trip Assistant features.

Both of these are part of ForeFlight’s efforts to “create a service around flight planning from end to end,” he explained, “designed to reduce workflow and keep you focused on the things that matter the most to your operation or business.”

The newest of these features is the ability for ForeFlight Mobile app users to receive pre-departure clearances (PDC) and digital-automatic terminal information service (D-ATIS) messages via text and email, in a partnership with Satcom Direct.

PDCs are available at more than 70 airports in North America, and once signed up for the ForeFlight service, pilots can receive D-ATIS and PDC messages 30 minutes or sooner before departure time. “PDCs are official text clearances issued for U.S. IFR flight plans, and include the filed route, the cleared altitude, transponder code, departure frequency, and any special instructions,” according to ForeFlight. Using the PDC service eliminates the need for pilots to contact clearance delivery via radio. However, for clearance changes, pilots do need to contact clearance delivery.

“These two valuable tools make flight and avionics setup efficient by eliminating a set of radio communications, they reduce controller workload, and help get the aircraft to the runway faster, which improves on-time performance,” said ForeFlight co-founder and CEO Tyson Weihs.

The PDC and D-ATIS features are available for no additional charge for ForeFlight Performance Plus and Business Performance subscribers. To active the PDC process, ForeFlight users need to send an email to success@foreflight.com or enable it through the ForeFlight website. The PDC is tied to a particular tail number or call sign, so anyone flying that aircraft can use PDC and “will also be expected by the FAA to use PDC and PDC-enabled airports,” according to ForeFlight.

There are some limitations to the new PDC service. Aircraft can currently receive a PDC at a particular airport only once every 18 hours. And aircraft can’t be signed up for PDC services from multiple service providers, just one at a time.

The number of PDC-capable airports is growing, and includes popular business aviation airports such as Teterboro, Westchester County, Burbank, Chicago Midway, John Wayne Orange County, and many others.

ForeFlight users can use the app’s route advisor to help choose routing that is likely to be cleared as filed, as PDC clearances are only for as-filed routes. If ATC chooses different routing, then the pilot won’t receive a PDC but will get an expected route notification. “That’s where our route advisor is really helpful,” said director of marketing Angela Anderson, “because it presents the recommended route and altitude, looking at aircraft performance and also recent ATC history, so you have a good shot of getting cleared as -filed.”

“The recommendations are based on the likelihood [of getting that route] and optimizing performance, winds, weather, et cetera,” said Newman. “All of these pieces are valuable when viewed on their own, but when used together on the workflow as we have designed it in this flight planning tier, it ratchets up the value.”
Trip Assistant Feature
Another recently added feature is ForeFlight’s Trip Assistant, also bundled with the flight planning tier. The idea is to give pilots and dispatchers a tool to calculate door-to-door time for a trip instead of just the flight time.

“We often think [in terms of] airport-to-airport,” Newman explained, “but life is not happening at  the airport;, it’s happening wherever we’re going once we leave the airport.” Trip Assistant takes into account ground traffic, turn times for a fuel stop, the aircraft type’s performance, and en route wind and weather. If the aircraft can’t fly a desired trip without stopping for fuel, Trip Assistant will provide a list of optional fuel stops, including FBO fuel prices or pricing from ForeFlight’s JetFuelX service. The user can customize Trip Assistant to maximize or minimize flight legs, adjust turn times if the default isn’t correct, or minimize fuel costs.

“Then it spits out an itinerary,” he said, “including when to leave, how much time will be spent in traffic, turn times, and when to depart or to arrive by to do the trip you want.”

The target market for Trip Assistant initially was small flight departments like ForeFlight’s own with an executive assistant helping plan trips. “The first question she gets is, ‘Wwhen do we leave?’” Newman said. “It’s just a mess. What we discovered as we started showing this feature is that it’s equally valuable for large flight departments with dispatch teams and charter quoting. They can do a whole scenario and get an idea of what the trip is going to take.”

ForeFlight has also added other useful features, including a filed flights list; an alert that notifies pilots that they are on final approach for a particular runway to help avoid wrong-runway landings; jet currency tracking in the logbook; organized track system depictions over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans; and traffic targets in synthetic vision, which includes a glance mode for adjusting the pilot’s point -of view in any direction.

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