Foreflight basic or Foreflight Pro?
Basic. Georeferenced plates and synthetic vision are cool, but won’t help
you become a better pilot. Save your money and get Basic.
Tory
2 Likes
If I may, pro has a great advantage of placing the approach plate on your actual map while you fly the approach. Maybe not for private but for instrument sure is a great deal to have and ab advantage, specially at checkride while doing multiple approaches one after another.
Enrico
1 Like
That’s what I mean by georeferenced plates. It’s a convenient feature to
have, but personally I don’t think it’s worth the extra $100/yr. It won’t
make or break you, and the airlines don’t use them.
Tory
Thanks Tory. I figured as much
Good point. Thank you
Tory,
Just started my training (1 flight so far) and looking at Foreflight. It appears they now have 3 tiers for individuals: Basic Plus, Pro Plus and Performance Plus ($100, $200, $300 respectively). It’s also possible of course they always had 3 tiers but no one on the site has even mentioned Performance Plus perhaps due to it just being very unnecessary. So my question is, do you still just recommend Basic Plus for us new students, not sure if they moved some functions from Basic to Pro if they indeed restructured it to 3 tiers from 2 tiers.
Any other current students or instructors have insight of it’s worth the money for Pro or Performance? Thanks all for the insight.
Sam
Hi Sam,
I have had the Pro Plus subscription for about a year, and I will be renewing it when it comes due in July.
While I have found that the geo-referenced plates to be useful for situational awareness in being able to see my aircraft on the approach plate during instrument training and thereafter, it is a bit of a handicap that is not useful when it came time for the IFR Checkride, as my DPE had me turn it off for the flight portion (I knew this was coming though as my instructor had advised me of this).
When it comes to use in my cross country flights to build time, I found georeferencing to be very useful when taxiing at an unfamiliar airport, because you can see yourself on the taxi diagram. Of course it is very important to review the taxi diagram at the new airport as part of preflight preparation and not use ForeFlight as a crutch.
All that said, I do think the extra $100/year is worth it specifically for the georeferencing, but it is more of a “want” than a “need”. It is important not to let these capabilities erode your spatial awareness and ability to use the required skills to know where you are at all times (pilotage, dead reckoning, radio navigation, etc).
-Bobby
1 Like
Sam,
As a student, Basic Plus is perfectly fine. As ForeFlight’s website describes, it includes all the essentials for VFR and IFR flying.
Remember, ForeFlight has only been around since 2007. Before that pilots used paper charts and calculated everything by hand. Even when I taught from 2015-17, I made sure that my students knew how to use both paper charts and ForeFlight. Every examiner still wants to verify that pilots know how to calculate performance and navigate via pilotage (by hand) and dead reckoning.
If you want to spend the extra $100 for Geo-Referenced Approaches & Charts and all the other features of Pro Plus, that’s up to you, but I see no point in purchasing Performance Plus. Personally, I’d save my money and stick with Basic Plus.
Tory
1 Like
Awesome, thanks for the feedback. I will at least know to consider Pro when making my subscription decision and that I should not count on it for my checkride.
Thanks for the feedback Tory. I have my 30 day free subscription now (I’m guessing it’s basic but I just downloaded it so haven’t yet poked around) and will see if I even want/need the extra bells and whistles of Pro.
Sam
1 Like
I would stick with he basic version myself. Many examiners will make you turn off the gee-whiz features during check rides, so you might as well train like that. Also, the airlines generally do not use any of the advanced features either, so no point in spoiling yourself.
While all of the extra features are cool, they will not do anything to make one a better pilot and in fact could work against you. Save your money.
Chris
3 Likes