ForeFlight is going up.

[0TreeLemur]

7 hours ago, midlifeflyer said:

BTW, there is one more consideration - what other equipment do you have? If, for example, you have a GTX345 transponder for ADS-B in or Flightstream, connectivity is only with Garmin Pilot or Foreflight. If you have been using a Sentry or Stratus (prior to Stratus 3), those only work with Foreflight.

I have Stratus 2.  The FlyQ web site says they support over 20 ADS-B systems.  When I click on the link to see which ones, it throws 404.   Several broken links on their site.

[KLRDMD]

21 minutes ago, 0TreeLemur said:

I have Stratus 2.  The FlyQ web site says they support over 20 ADS-B systems.  When I click on the link to see which ones, it throws 404.   Several broken links on their site.

https://www.seattleavionics.com/products/FlyQ_efb/ADS-b/index.html

[0TreeLemur]

6 minutes ago, KLRDMD said:

https://www.seattleavionics.com/products/FlyQ_efb/ADS-b/index.html

Thanks Ken.   Looking at that site, I see that @midlifeflyer is correct.  Stratus 2 not supported.   Guess I'll be sticking with foreflight.

 

[RobertGary1]

2 hours ago, stevesm20b said:

I have used WingX, Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight. When my ForeFlight subscription expires I think I will go back to WingX.

or join  CAP. Always looking for pilots and cfi who want to work for free. 

[EricJ]

I used FltPlan GO on Android until I got tired of it exiting whenever my lap belt bounced on the back button, which is the exit control.   I'd go to look at it at some critical moment and it would be gone, unloaded.   It seemed like a safety issue to me, so I switched to Avare (also free, since I'm cheap), which didn't have that problem. 

I'd been very happy with Avare until the last release, which was apparently an update to accommodate a Google security requirement to move file storage internal.   Unfortunately their implementation fubared a bunch of highly used features and made me miss a day of flying because I had to re-initialize everything including reloading all of the chart databases, etc.  It is apparently going to take them a while to restore some of the functionality and get it back to where it was.   I hope they get it sorted out, because it really is a good app, but the way they've handled it and the mediocre support has had me rethinking my EFB selection.

So I went back and updated/refreshed my FltPlan Go installations.   Some things there are better, some worse, but I've found myself still using Avare because there are a few features I like or rely on that seem better there.   Either are very good EFBs, especially for being free to use.  If Avare doesn't recover from their update disaster I'll likely switch to something else. 

A buddy has been an iFlyGPS convert for a while and I've been considering that, but it requires a subscription and I've been spoiled by the free aspects of Avare and FltPlan Go.

[midlifeflyer]

10 hours ago, KLRDMD said:

https://www.seattleavionics.com/products/FlyQ_efb/ADS-b/index.html

At one point, Seattle hacked into the Stratus 2 feed and was able to use it so long as you never updated the Stratus 2 firmware. 

[cujet]

The pricing structure of the aviation giants is stunning, with $500 O2 and N2 bottles selling for $20,000. It's no surprise Boeing won't keep Foreflight economical. 

[VetRepp]

 

FlyQ .

(I Have Garmin pilot thru database subscription add on, and FlyQ. I had FF a long time ago and got tired of their nickel and diming and dumped them.

I use FlyQ almost exclusively - I like it the best , easy to use , intuitive, not cluttered, and very cheap lifetime subscription. I sometimes use GP in cockpit bcs it connects to G1000,)

[RobertGary1]

On 3/25/2022 at 5:50 PM, stevesm20b said:

I have used WingX, Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight. When my ForeFlight subscription expires I think I will go back to WingX.

I’ve used them all too. It really depends on the features you want. WingX has far fewer features but probably has what most ifr/vfr pilots really need. 

[tigers2007]

FYI for anyone that wants to dump FF but access the logbooks. This is easier for dedicated tablets. Prior to account expiration, disconnect from the network prior to opening the FF application so it doesn’t download any updates. Make sure it’s offline prior to using the app and also backdate the clock. This will buy you some time so you can print out/save pdf’s of your logs.

[PT20J]

The price increases are inevitable, whether Boeing purchased them or not.

A new product can easily grow annual sales by expanding market share. But once a product becomes dominant in a market that is not rapidly expanding, growth slows. Pretty much everyone who needs one already has one, and it is difficult to continue to develop compelling enough features to sell upgrades in sufficient quantity. For some time the buzzword in the industry has been SaaS (Software as a Service). The idea is to move from a pricing model where software is sold as product to one where it is sold as a service. In the service model, you purchase a subscription rather than a perpetual license. This is why Microsoft wants you to buy Office 365 and why Quicken is now sold as a subscription. The ForeFlight subscription price includes the databases, but is only loosely tied to the cost of those updates. Mostly, it's a pricing model necessary to provide a continued revenue stream to keep a dominant product viable in a stagnant market. Prices will go up over time because our economic system demands growth, and if the growth in revenue cannot come from an expanding market, and/or greater market penetration, it has to come from price increases.

Skip

[MikeOH]

25 minutes ago, PT20J said:

The price increases are inevitable, whether Boeing purchased them or not.

A new product can easily grow annual sales by expanding market share. But once a product becomes dominant in a market that is not rapidly expanding, growth slows. Pretty much everyone who needs one already has one, and it is difficult to continue to develop compelling enough features to sell upgrades in sufficient quantity. For some time the buzzword in the industry has been SaaS (software as a Service). The idea is to move from a pricing model where software is sold as product to one where it is sold as a service. In the service model, you purchase a subscription rather than a perpetual license. This is why Microsoft wants you to buy Office 365 and why Quicken is now sold as a subscription. The ForeFlight subscription price includes the databases, but is only loosely tied to the cost of those updates. Mostly, it's a pricing model necessary to provide a continued revenue stream to keep a dominant product viable in a stagnant market. Prices will go up over time because our economic system demands growth, and if the growth in revenue cannot come from an expanding market, and/or greater market penetration, it has to come from price increases.

Skip

Hmm, you state your opinion in the tone of fact!  I don't agree.

Here's my opinion, stated as fact: Software is NOT a manufactured product.  Once developed, it costs virtually nothing to produce, and very little to distribute.  And, subscription renewal is virtually without cost.  Yes, there are marketing and support costs, but the existing revenue stream easily supports new product feature development WITHOUT any increase in price.  I see zero reason Boeing NEEDS to increase price to "remain dominant in a stagnant market".  Frankly, raising prices in a stagnant market sounds like a great way to drive their existing customers away!  I'm sure going to look into other options!

What it is, is simple capitalist greed (which I have no problem with, actually): Boeing is raising prices because they believe they can get away with it.  I'm not buying it has anything to do with 'cost increases' or 'stagnant markets.  I maintain Boeing bought Foreflight precisely because they saw a cash cow that wasn't being "fully milked!"  Time will tell if they lose appreciable market share; I have no idea how much of their revenue stream is from hobby GA pilots like myself (where price matters) vs. corporate/pro flight departments where this price increase is 'lost in the rounding".  That is, Boeing may not give a hoot if they lose a small GA customer

[LANCECASPER]

19 hours ago, VetRepp said:

I sometimes use GP in cockpit bcs it connects to G1000

How do you get Garmin Pilot to connect to your G1000 on your Ovation?

[PT20J]

26 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

Hmm, you state your opinion in the tone of fact!  I don't agree.

Here's my opinion, stated as fact: Software is NOT a manufactured product.  Once developed, it costs virtually nothing to produce, and very little to distribute.  And, subscription renewal is virtually without cost.  Yes, there are marketing and support costs, but the existing revenue stream easily supports new product feature development WITHOUT any increase in price.  I see zero reason Boeing NEEDS to increase price to "remain dominant in a stagnant market".  Frankly, raising prices in a stagnant market sounds like a great way to drive their existing customers away!  I'm sure going to look into other options!

What it is, is simple capitalist greed (which I have no problem with, actually): Boeing is raising prices because they believe they can get away with it.  I'm not buying it has anything to do with 'cost increases' or 'stagnant markets.  I maintain Boeing bought Foreflight precisely because they saw a cash cow that wasn't being "fully milked!"  Time will tell if they lose appreciable market share; I have no idea how much of their revenue stream is from hobby GA pilots like myself (where price matters) vs. corporate/pro flight departments where this price increase is 'lost in the rounding".  That is, Boeing may not give a hoot if they lose a small GA customer

Do you really think that Boeing needs the revenue stream from ForeFlight? It's a drop in Boeing's very large bucket. It's much more likely that they bought it for the technology, much as with Lockheed Dataplan years ago, and Jeppesen more recently.

As someone who has held senior management positions at a number of companies marketing both consumer and enterprise software, I have been in more meetings than I care to remember where these issues have been thrashed about. And, having been responsible for engineering, I can tell you that the cost to maintain software is not trivial. There are always bugs being discovered, requests for feature enhancements, old code bases that become unmaintainable over time and need to be rewritten, and all this needs extensive testing for which test suites have to be continuously revised and maintained. And, good software engineers are a scare resource and command premium wages.

Skip

[tigers2007]

What did BA pay for FF? I see the press release stated “will enable us to compete and win in the $2.8 trillion, 10-year services market.” so I assume it wasn’t cheap. FF reportedly had 180 staff members as of May 2019.

[mhrivnak]

11 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

Hmm, you state your opinion in the tone of fact!  I don't agree.

Here's my opinion, stated as fact: Software is NOT a manufactured product.  Once developed, it costs virtually nothing to produce, and very little to distribute.  And, subscription renewal is virtually without cost.  Yes, there are marketing and support costs, but the existing revenue stream easily supports new product feature development WITHOUT any increase in price.  I see zero reason Boeing NEEDS to increase price to "remain dominant in a stagnant market".  Frankly, raising prices in a stagnant market sounds like a great way to drive their existing customers away!  I'm sure going to look into other options!

What it is, is simple capitalist greed (which I have no problem with, actually): Boeing is raising prices because they believe they can get away with it.  I'm not buying it has anything to do with 'cost increases' or 'stagnant markets.  I maintain Boeing bought Foreflight precisely because they saw a cash cow that wasn't being "fully milked!"  Time will tell if they lose appreciable market share; I have no idea how much of their revenue stream is from hobby GA pilots like myself (where price matters) vs. corporate/pro flight departments where this price increase is 'lost in the rounding".  That is, Boeing may not give a hoot if they lose a small GA customer

I work in the software industry, and I interact with a lot of different software vendors. A product like Foreflight certainly costs a lot just to maintain status quo, without new feature development. It's not like an old video game where you write the software once and then sell a bunch of copies until it's time for a sequel. I have no direct knowledge of how Foreflight operates, but I'm a customer, and here are my assumptions:

• They run a lot of cloud services for you. Logs, weather data, traffic, flight plan synchronizing, flight plan filing with the FAA, chart data, etc. Serving those reliably takes teams of people just to ensure it doesn't break, and that if/when an outage happens, it gets fixed quickly.
• They integrate with numerous external services. I assume there are multiple weather data vendors, aerial imagery, chart updates, street maps, terrain data, ATC integration with multiple countries, etc. Each of those change over time in how they work, occasionally has an outage for FF to deal with, and there's a vendor relationship to be maintained.
• The above requires significant computing infrastructure, hopefully across multiple data centers in different regions, etc. They likely use one of the public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, ...) and have a hefty monthly bill.
• Testing on new Apple hardware and new versions of iOS is critical and not trivial. Robust testing alone is a significant effort. Sometimes issues are found that need to be fixed. Sometimes a new iOS release requires significant changes in the product.
• The above point applies also to testing with a long list of avionics integrations.
• And testing on a variety of computers and web browsers that are always changing.
• Providing good customer support is not cheap.
• Security has never been more important for software. Whenever a vulnerability is discovered in a device, iOS itself, some software library FF uses, a service FF uses, or in FF itself, they need to be ready and able to fix that very quickly. And keeping bad actors from compromising their cloud services is likewise a significant and critical area of continuous investment.

And on top of all of that, they do of course develop new features. That adds yet another layer of complexity to everything described above.

Everything above takes many teams of people with tech talent. The competition for hiring tech talent has never been fiercer, and salary pressure is high. There is a lot of turnover industry-wide as people pursue better opportunities or just more money. Not to mention, all of these people have to live somewhere, and the cost of housing in the US has gone up tremendously in recent years. I took a peek at their glassdoor.com page, and a theme in the reviews is below-average pay. Maybe in the past they've been able to make up for that by retaining people who like working in aviation specifically.

[DXB]

I just renewed my Foreflight subscription for $250 - a bit painful on top of the ~$700 subscription for my GPS databases.  I'm basically paying an AMU annually just for the privilege of navigating IFR.

As a Stratus receiver user, I'm intrigued by the Appareo Insight offering: https://stratusinsight.app/ for only $100 annually.  

It seems to have everything I actually use in Foreflight plus some other interesting features, and I would anticipate the receiver integration is seamless.  

Anyone have any reviews and/or experience making the switch from Foreflight?

[RobertGary1]

1 hour ago, MikeOH said:

Hmm, you state your opinion in the tone of fact!  I don't agree.

Here's my opinion, stated as fact: Software is NOT a manufactured product.  Once developed, it costs virtually nothing to produce, and very little to distribute.  And, subscription renewal is virtually without cost.  Yes, there are marketing and support costs, but the existing revenue stream easily supports new product feature development WITHOUT any increase in price.  I see zero reason Boeing NEEDS to increase price to "remain dominant in a stagnant market".  Frankly, raising prices in a stagnant market sounds like a great way to drive their existing customers away!  I'm sure going to look into other options!

What it is, is simple capitalist greed (which I have no problem with, actually): Boeing is raising prices because they believe they can get away with it.  I'm not buying it has anything to do with 'cost increases' or 'stagnant markets.  I maintain Boeing bought Foreflight precisely because they saw a cash cow that wasn't being "fully milked!"  Time will tell if they lose appreciable market share; I have no idea how much of their revenue stream is from hobby GA pilots like myself (where price matters) vs. corporate/pro flight departments where this price increase is 'lost in the rounding".  That is, Boeing may not give a hoot if they lose a small GA customer

Software only costs nothing if you are letting it die. Boeing shows no signs of letting off the gas with new features in foreflight. And keeping software up and fixing bugs requires a large org. 
Ultimately it comes down to if people find value in it. There are lots of options for pilots so those that don’t find the value to be amazing can buy others. 
personally I’m loving the savings vs all the charts and plates I used to have to buy. 

[RobertGary1]

2 minutes ago, DXB said:

I just renewed my Foreflight subscription for $250 - a bit painful on top of the ~$700 subscription for my GPS databases.  I'm basically paying an AMU annually just for the privilege of navigating IFR.

As a Stratus receiver user, I'm intrigued by the Appareo Insight offering: https://stratusinsight.app/ for only $100 annually.  

It seems to have everything I actually use in Foreflight plus some other interesting features, and I would anticipate the receiver integration is seamless.  

Anyone have any reviews and/or experience making the switch from Foreflight?

What did we pay to keep 1/2 dozen sectionals, several approach plate books and several enroute charts plus afd all current? Trying to remember what I paid just for jepp sub then.  

[PT20J]

What I really wish is that Garmin had purchased ForeFlight to learn how to do customer service. If I email team@foreflight.com, I get an immediate automated response letting me know that the case has been logged and an answer to my question within a day -- sometimes less. If I email aviation.support@garmin.com, it goes into a black hole. I eventually get an answer, but sometimes it takes a week or two. Frequently the answers are perfunctory and sometimes just plain wrong.

Skip

[Hank]

23 minutes ago, RobertGary1 said:

What did we pay to keep 1/2 dozen sectionals, several approach plate books and several enroute charts plus afd all current? Trying to remember what I paid just for jepp sub then.  

I used to have a subscription-- plates were $4.65 per state, sectionals were ~$8 each, Low Enroutes <$5 each. Sectional was good for 6 months, everything else was 56 days.

How many did you keep? Do the math . . . .

[MikeOH]

25 minutes ago, RobertGary1 said:

Software only costs nothing if you are letting it die. Boeing shows no signs of letting off the gas with new features in foreflight. And keeping software up and fixing bugs requires a large org. 
Ultimately it comes down to if people find value in it. There are lots of options for pilots so those that don’t find the value to be amazing can buy others. 
personally I’m loving the savings vs all the charts and plates I used to have to buy. 

This response is directed at both you, @PT20J, and @mhrivnak.

1) Don't think you are the only ones with management, product support, and marketing experience!

2) So, if it costs oh, so much to maintain software or it 'dies'.  Then please explain how other POPULAR EFBs like FlyQ, and FltPlan Go manage to thrive without gouging their customers?

3) It never ceases to amaze me how many fan boys will defend companies that jack their prices by 20% at a time

[MikeOH]

32 minutes ago, RobertGary1 said:

What did we pay to keep 1/2 dozen sectionals, several approach plate books and several enroute charts plus afd all current? Trying to remember what I paid just for jepp sub then.  

Ah, so as long as that total is greater than what Boeing charges for Foreflight you'll be happy?

[RobertGary1]

27 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

This response is directed at both you, @PT20J, and @mhrivnak.

1) Don't think you are the only ones with management, product support, and marketing experience!

2) So, if it costs oh, so much to maintain software or it 'dies'.  Then please explain how other POPULAR EFBs like FlyQ, and FltPlan Go manage to thrive without gouging their customers?

3) It never ceases to amaze me how many fan boys will defend companies that jack their prices by 20% at a time

Yes im a Silicon Valley software guy. FlyQ has far fewer features so maintenance is less expensive and I’m sure their rnd budget is 1/10 of foreflight. 
There is no gouging it’s not a captive audience. If the restaurant is too expensive eat Nextdoor 

[RobertGary1]

28 minutes ago, MikeOH said:

Ah, so as long as that total is greater than what Boeing charges for Foreflight you'll be happy?

Basically. I really enjoy all the features of the product and happy to not have to drive down to the fbo to buy charts the night before an early flight. 
But there are less expensive ipad products for those who don’t love the features of foreflight .