Story ID: 
Garmin Pilot Improves Global Features
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: New versions of Garmin's Pilot app are available for both the iOS and Android platforms.
Word Count: 536
The Garmin Pilot app for iOS is now available in Version 8.7, which adds Eurocontrol autorouting and flight plan filing, as well as other new features applicable to all users. The Android version of Garmin Pilot has also been updated with global flight planning and weather information.

For users flying in European airspace, the iOS version of Garmin Pilot can now be used for easier flight plan filing and flying through complex airspace. From the trip-planning page, users simply input the departure and destination airports and areas they want to avoid. Eurocontrol validates the route and offers it to the pilot, or they can browse alternate routes, then select one and activate it. The routes are based on “optimized criteria set by the pilot, including time, fuel required or altitude,” according to Garmin. “For easier interpretation, pilots can also view the route on a map, prior to filing and activating the flight plan.”

Garmin Pilot on iOS now allows the user to configure radar and infrared satellite color palettes, with various selections available. For radar colors, the user can choose between Garmin’s depiction, NOAA, Alt or Classic. Infrared satellite colors are available in three Alt views or Classic.

Garmin has added winds and temperatures aloft information to its radial menu. Once users select winds/temps aloft information as an overlay from the map layer picker, they can choose the winds aloft icon on the radial menu popup. The information also offers a forecast timeline to view the winds/temps aloft forecast for various time periods.

The new graphical depiction of forecast icing conditions allows the user to set the altitude (up to 30,000 feet) and time, then view a forecast of icing severity+SLD (supercooled liquid droplets) or probability. 

For aircraft equipped with Garmin’s Flight Stream 510 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connector, the Garmin Pilot app can now facilitate updating of Jeppesen charts into installed avionics (Garmin G1000 NXi and GTN 650/750). This is a feature of the Garmin Connext system’s Database Concierge. 

Also new in Version 8.7 for iOS is the addition of the scratchpad to the split-screen mode, so it isn’t necessary to leave the map mode to use the scratchpad.

The latest Android version of Garmin Pilot allows the app to be used for flight planning, viewing weather information and filing VFR flight plans in many parts of the world. The app’s maps now offer worldwide coverage provided by Jeppesen NavData. A new overlay feature on the moving map is European visual reporting points.

Weather information includes Metars, TAFs, Airmets, Sigmets, Notams and winds aloft, and these can be displayed as overlays on the moving map, on airport information pages and as widgets in split-screen mode. Radar and satellite imagery is available in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and the U.S. 

The Android version now includes FastFind, “which incorporates predictive logic to suggest airports and waypoints using current GPS location, so entering flight plan information is faster and easier,” according to Garmin.

Both the iOS and Android versions of Garmin Pilot are available for free for 30 days. Annual subscriptions start at $74.99.