Garmin Announces the All-New Garmin Pilot Web

[Garmin Aviation Team]

 

 

Hi everyone,

The Garmin team has a big announcement that I am excited to share with you today.  Garmin Pilot Web, an all-new flight planning companion tool to Garmin Pilot mobile, is now available for pilots to plan, file, and sync flight plans from computers to mobile devices. With access to free at-a-glance flight planning tools on the maps tab, pilots have all the data at their fingertips to run what-if flight scenarios and get in-depth weather information without a Garmin Pilot subscription. Subscribers can seamlessly create trips, file flight plans, and sync data to the Garmin Pilot app. With easy to navigate maps, flights, and aircraft tabs, Garmin Pilot Web gives you many of the beloved features in the Garmin Pilot app on a larger viewing platform.

As a new Garmin Pilot user, I thought I would bring you all in on the flight planning process I went through on a recent flight to Nashville to visit my family. While sitting at home, I wanted to see if I could make it from Kansas City to Nashville non-stop in my F35 Bonanza. I didn’t have my iPad with me, so I decided to pull up Garmin Pilot Web to do my flight planning and filing.

I like to start with the simple, at-a-glance flight planning tools on the maps tab to determine if I need to add fuel stops along my route. By entering basic route details, TAS, and fuel burn, the performance engine instantaneously generated the distance, fuel burn, and time enroute values I needed for easy decision making. Looking through the 100LL layer with price color coding, I was able to quickly scan the estimated fuel prices in the Nashville area. Once I confirmed my departure and destination airports, I clicked the blue Create Flight button which brought me to the Flights tab to calculate detailed flight plan information.

With basic flight plan information auto filled, I refined my routing by clicking the routes button to generate frequently flown and ATC prescribed routing options. I selected the most economical option for my altitude and previewed the expandable map on the flights tab to get a high-level overview of my new routing. To get the most accurate performance and weight and balance calculations for my cross country, I added a new aircraft under “Aircraft ID” to build out an aircraft profile for the Bonanza. This gave me the option to manually add the aircraft or utilize loaded templates which are available for many piston single, twin engine aircraft, and some turboprop aircraft. I chose to manually enter data since my older bonanza has multiple STCs. Across the top of my flight plan, I walked through the summary of details that outlined distance, required fuel, average wind speed, estimated time in route, estimated time of arrival, and filing status. In the payload section at the bottom left, I clicked on weight and balance to insert passengers, cargo, and fuel on board. The graphical flight envelope showed my zero fuel, landing, and takeoff weights all within range.

Now that I knew I could make the trip non-stop, had my route plotted, and knew that I was safely within my weight & balance limitations, I headed over to the maps page to build my situational awareness for the upcoming flight. Clicking on the layers icon in the bottom left corner, I was able to toggle through the variety of base map options such as topo, satellite, street map, and VFR/IFR charts. I personally like to use the topo map because it’s easy to see terrain shading along your route. I also added the all-new aeronautical overlay to easily identify airspace, airports, and other aeronautical details near my planned route. In areas where I wanted more information, I was able to click anywhere on the map to reveal highlighted airspace, altitudes, and elevations to confirm that my routing and altitude kept me free from hazards.

Since it was my first time flying into Nashville, I needed to learn as much about that busy airport as possible. To do that, I clicked directly on the airport to walk through general airport information, FBO pricing/hours, available services in case I had a maintenance issue, runway details, etc. The Info section had a great recap list of important details such as tower hours, elevation/traffic pattern altitude, best wind runways, fuel pricing/fees, and more. I like to be overprepared when flying into congested airports like Nashville, so I turned on the map traffic layer to get an idea of the different types of aircraft flying in. That day I ended up at “best forward speed” with a 747 in front of me and a 737 behind me! To familiarize myself with the airport layout and FBO locations, I went to the charts section for the BNA airport to view the FAA airport diagram. I also looked at approaches, which were easy to scan since the data is sorted by runway, with current wind conditions and runway closure information all right there to see. Lastly, I checked airport NOTAMs, which can be quickly filtered to show information important to me.

Now that I was familiarized with the airports I was flying into, the next step was to look at forecasted weather along my route. The weather layers on the maps tab are a great resource to help see the high-level overview of weather systems across the country. Since I was flying in the Midwest which is known for convective activity this time of year, I started with the high-fidelity weather radar. Many of these layers have a slider across the bottom and expandable layer filters found by clicking on the layer name in the bottom middle. I was able to manipulate the data to show a specific time frame and include lightning, storm cell, and IR cloud selectable options. Next, I added the new color-coded visual winds aloft overlay that shows wind direction and velocity. These wind particles helped me visualize wind speed/direction patterns around convective activity. Since my flight was planned for later that day, I also looked at the color-coded temperatures aloft data to get an idea of aircraft climb performance. While icing wasn’t a huge factor this time of year, I quickly glanced at the icing forecast as well as the AIRMET/SIGMET, PIREP, and METAR overlays. Lastly, I checked the weather at my departure and destination airports. When clicking on the airport, I walked through the daily/hourly forecasts, METARs, TAFs, MOS, Winds Aloft, and the textual weather synopsis.

Once I built up my situational awareness, I was almost ready to file my flight plan. Before filing, I like to look through the weather briefing to double-check for any factors that may cause me to cancel or delay my filed flight. The Leidos weather briefing, found on the top middle section of the flight I created on the flights tab, does a great job of giving you granular data along the whole route. The standard briefing outlined adverse conditions to be aware of, current and forecasted weather, NOTAMs, and more. After I made the “GO” decision, I clicked the blue filing form to review my flight details and file the flight plan (filing/syncing currently only available in North America).

Once I arrived at the aircraft and completed my preflight, I opened the Garmin Pilot app on my iPad to see the Nashville trip under the Trip Planning section that synced automatically from Garmin Pilot Web. I clicked the “view on map” button to bring my filed flight route to the maps page and walked through the Leidos briefing one more time to review any updated information. 

From flight planning and filing on my computer at home to taking off using the trip synced to my iPad, I was able to use the robust data on both Garmin Pilot Web and the Garmin Pilot app to safely visit my loved ones in Nashville!

Garmin Pilot Web (pilotweb.garmin.com) offers a wide variety of flight planning tools within the Free, Standard, and Premium packages. The free version gives pilots access to the maps tab with selectable base maps, data layers like weather/NOTAMs/fuel prices, FAA charts, airport information, and more. The free version also includes simple, at-a-glance flight planning tools on the maps page to run what-if scenarios on upcoming flights based on forecasted winds aloft at the time of departure. Pilots with a Standard Garmin Pilot subscription ($109.99/yr in US) now have access to advanced functionality on the Maps, Flights, and Aircraft Tabs.  With the ability to plan, save, and file flight plans, request briefings, add/edit aircraft profiles, and view internet traffic, users can finish the flight planning process all in one place. Garmin Pilot Premium users ($209.98/yr in US) get access to all standard subscription features plus icing forecasts and Garmin SafeTaxi® diagrams.

To learn more about what this tool can do for you, sign up for our Mooneyspace member exclusive Garmin Pilot Web Webinar hosted by Joe on May 21st at 4pm CST.

I look forward to hearing your feedback and learning about your Garmin adventures!

Sabrina Meiklejohn

Sales & Customer Experience Manager

Edited April 29 by Garmin Aviation Team

[natdm]

With ForeFlight being bought out by a private equity firm, this stuff couldn't have come at a better time. 

[Flyler]

This is GREAT!!  I prefer GP to ForeFlight, but the biggest downside for me has been lack of webapp.  Badabing, here we go!

[varlajo]

 

1 hour ago, Garmin Aviation Team said:

I refined my routing by clicking the routes button

Is a drag-and-drop functionality in the works for graphically editing a route? 

[toto]

1 hour ago, Flyler said:

This is GREAT!!  I prefer GP to ForeFlight, but the biggest downside for me has been lack of webapp.  Badabing, here we go!

Same.  This is awesome.  Thank you Sabrina!

[201Mooniac]

Overall I think this is great.  One feature I'd like to see that I might have missed in my quick check of the app, is there a way to auto-route via airways and constrain the max MEA?  I miss that functionality because I often fly to small airports where there are no ATC routes that show up and given I'm NA, I worry about MEAs in the mountains out west here..

[flyboy0681]

This put the AOPA online planner to shame.

[Oscar Avalle]

nice...what areas does it cover?

[PeteMc]

I'm waiting to see how dumb the new owners of FF are...  I'm hoping the masses are wrong, but they'll probably turn out to be correct that the FF prices will take a big jump.  So I may be seeing G Pilot in my future.

Too bad Garmin didn't buy FF from Boeing.  (Not that they probably would have raised the prices too! )

[dkkim73]

Also looking at this with great interest. It really helps flesh out GP, which already is cross-platform on the mobile side. 

@Garmin Aviation Team do you intend to stay engaged on forums like this? I will say that Foreflight has pretty extensive tutorial info and support. I would think Garmin could compete well with this given your level of support for GPS products. 

On weakness of the Garmin web site for me is accessing support resources. They are there, but the website is somewhat inscrutable and it bounces you between what looks like an account mgmt site, the pilot download site, and a consumer-facing site pitching running accessories as you navigate it.  Anyhow, that can be fixed. 

The product you outline looks great. Looking forward to seeing more. 

For marketing: consider adding Garmin Pilot to your big GPS subscriptions (e.g. >$1000K for a G1000, why not just add the base subscription instead of just an "upgrade"?). It would add a lot of organic usage and build the base. I was already on Foreflight so I never made the leap, but I would trial GP more if I just "had it". 

[jeremyc209]

I wish Garmin Pilot could use my Sentry, I'd give it a shot if so. 

[PeteMc]

2 hours ago, jeremyc209 said:

I wish Garmin Pilot could use my Sentry, I'd give it a shot if so. 

There are other options besides the Sentry.  Garmin, DUAL Statux (sp?) and others are out there.  

[jeremyc209]

On 4/29/2025 at 11:11 PM, PeteMc said:

There are other options besides the Sentry.  Garmin, DUAL Statux (sp?) and others are out there.  

Yeah it's just a lot of money to test out another app, I do see used Strarux units for a couple hundred on ebay though. Then deal with having to sell the Sentry if I did switch etc. Would love to get away from the iPhone too. Simply testing out a different app is a bit of a commitment.

[CCAS]

On 4/29/2025 at 9:05 AM, Garmin Aviation Team said:

I look forward to hearing your feedback and learning about your Garmin adventures!

@Garmin Aviation Team Any plans to add an option for Third-Party ADS-B Hex Call Sign to support the FAA’s PIA program?  Of the current three PIA call sign vendors mentioned on the FAA website, only Foreflight appears to be offering the service so there isn’t any competition. I think there’s value in Garmin offering the service as part of a Standard Garmin Pilot plan. 

[gabez]

it's so good!!!

 

[Justin Schmidt]

@Garmin Aviation Team went to FF a few years ago because the feature parity between iOS and Android was horrible.  Is feature parity better and is there a list?

[toto]

1 hour ago, Justin Schmidt said:

@Garmin Aviation Team went to FF a few years ago because the feature parity between iOS and Android was horrible.  Is feature parity better and is there a list?

I bought an iPad for this reason, though I strongly preferred the Android platform. Garmin Pilot on Android was always far behind GP on iOS, and showed no signs of catching up. Garmin support indicated to me that supporting Android was difficult because of the wide array of hardware implementations, and that they would never guarantee parity (in fact, some features might never make it to Android, even years after landing on iOS). 

I’m still a GP user, and have never tried ForeFlight, but I’ll be very interested to hear if the approach to Android support has changed. 

[Justin Schmidt]

14 minutes ago, toto said:

I bought an iPad for this reason, though I strongly preferred the Android platform. Garmin Pilot on Android was always far behind GP on iOS, and showed no signs of catching up. Garmin support indicated to me that supporting Android was difficult because of the wide array of hardware implementations, and that they would never guarantee parity (in fact, some features might never make it to Android, even years after landing on iOS). 

I’m still a GP user, and have never tried ForeFlight, but I’ll be very interested to hear if the approach to Android support has changed. 

As a software engineer,  development in the iOS sphere is more difficult, dealing with apple. 

Development in Android is much easier and testing in Android is easier than people make it out to be. Just because there are more hardware manufacturers does not make testing the software any more difficult,  i do it everyday. As garmin auto was one of my clients a few years back, what we did was also linux based and more COTS components.

Also, something that boeing never caught on with, I mean they suck at testing anyway. Hoping the new owners see the market for it if garmin cannot get their stuff together. 

Honestly,  i really like ifly but i have a gtx345 and don't want to add another device i have to keep charged for adsb in.

[PeteMc]

1 hour ago, Justin Schmidt said:

Development in Android is much easier and testing in Android is easier than people make it out to be. Just because there are more hardware manufacturers does not make testing the software any more difficult,  i do it everyday.

Yea, been down that road...  but you still keep hearing the "Aaappplllleeee" mantra.   I do think there can be issue when creating more complex Apps with all the various Android OS out there.  But there is zero reason why FF couldn't create a very reliable and useable FF Lite, if they wanted to.  

Who knows, maybe FF's new owner will go down that untouched path to go after the untouched market.   

 

[hazek]

One of the things I fear missing out on if I switched from FF to GP is my performance profile for my plane. It allows for super easy flight planning. Both in terms of fuel requirement and runway requirement.

Another thing I would miss very much is the way NOTAMs are displayed graphically in Europe as well the vertical profile of the flight path. This allows again to do flight planning much much more quickly, especially when the airspace is complex and there are many zones overlapping.

[Fly Boomer]

1 hour ago, hazek said:

as well the vertical profile of the flight path

Agree.  I upgraded my subscription just for that one feature,

[jeremyc209]

Funny how @Garmin Aviation Team has yet to weigh in on any questions or feedback offered in this thread/ad. It's probably going to take a tad more effort to get people away from FF. 

[Rick Junkin]

On 5/5/2025 at 4:08 PM, hazek said:

One of the things I fear missing out on if I switched from FF to GP is my performance profile for my plane. It allows for super easy flight planning. Both in terms of fuel requirement and runway requirement.

Another thing I would miss very much is the way NOTAMs are displayed graphically in Europe as well the vertical profile of the flight path. This allows again to do flight planning much much more quickly, especially when the airspace is complex and there are many zones overlapping.

@hazek The vertical profile is there, it just isn't where you think it would be. Go to the MAP view on an iPad and select the carrot at the edge of the screen to select split screen. Then select Flight Profile by touching the image above the carrot.

EDIT: On the iPhone, Flight Profile is on the Main Menu since there is no split screen mode.

I decided to take the plunge and subscribe to Garmin Pilot + Premium and spend a year running it as primary with my Foreflight Performance Plus backing it up. I'm in the midst of spending some quality time with x-plane and GP to exercise all I can outside the cockpit to get comfortable with it.

I've been a Foreflight user pretty much from the time it hit the market and consider myself proficient. I've also put a lot of time into building checklists and profiles in Foreflight for my Bravo, and tailored the organic Performance Plus profile to match my LOP ops almost exactly. I use the log book function as well, and have found it extremely convenient. But I put a full Garmin panel in my airplane a couple of years ago so I gave Garmin Pilot a short trial back then. I even bought a Mach 1 Pro watch so I was of a mind to go all in on Garmin

My GP trial didn't last long. I found the weather briefing capability and aircraft performance profiles in Foreflight to be superior, and those are the two things I depend on most heavily. In other words I didn't really give GP much of a chance because I almost immediately decided I didn't like it. The Leidos integration seemed clumsy compared to the Foreflight organic weather and flight plan filing integration. Flight planning in GP didn't feel intuitive and I didn't use it long enough to get comfortable with the Flight Plan/Trip Planning/Map interactions to a degree where I would have confidence I would be able to use it in the cockpit under stress. I had built a rudimentary performance profile for my airplane that worked but missed the takeoff and landing data provided in Foreflight. The TOLD isn't a huge thing, but it's a thing, and I discovered I used it in Foreflight more than I realized. In hindsight what it really came down to then is that I had invested a lot of time in, and had years of experience with Foreflight and I wasn't prepared to give that same effort to Garmin Pilot.

So now I'm investing the time and effort in GP to become proficient with it. I still don't like the weather briefing, but it works. I don't like that there is no organic performance profile for the M20M Bravo, but I can refine the rudimentary one I built or modify one provided for a different airplane in the app. I don't like that there is no TOLD support, but I can use my own TOLD charts and tables I built when I first bought the airplane. I imported all of my logbook data from Foreflight and need to compare the two to see what all dropped out and how GP Logbook measures up to what I need/want it to do. I've transitioned to using the checklist function on the G3X so I probably won't build new checklists in GP. It would be great if the .ace file format could be used in GP checklists but I haven't researched that yet. I'm having a hard time adjusting to the format and sequences for flight planning but that's just a training issue. I have a lot of negative transference from using Foreflight so long. I'll figure it out.

Oh, one thing I DID discover about GP that is important to me is GP can access external documents on iCloud. Foreflight cannot and I have to maintain a premium DropBox account for my avionics guides and other references I want through Foreflight. So if I fully transition to GP I can drop my DropBox subscription.

Comparing Foreflight to Garmin Pilot is like comparing the F-15E to the F/A-18E/F. The F-15E is more like a PC operating system where you get down into the weeds technically and have multiple ways of accomplishing most tasks, where the F/A-18 is more like a Mac where you turn it on and things just work; but you have to know HOW they work. Each one does different things better than the other, but they both get the job done well. 

 

[Ragsf15e]

46 minutes ago, Rick Junkin said:

@hazek The vertical profile is there, it just isn't where you think it would be. Go to the MAP view and select the carrot at the edge of the screen to select split screen. Then select Flight Profile by touching above the carrot.

I decided to take the plunge and subscribe to Garmin Pilot + Premium and spend a year running it as primary with my Foreflight Performance Plus backing it up. I'm in the midst of spending some quality time with x-plane and GP to exercise all I can outside the cockpit to get comfortable with it.

I've been a Foreflight user pretty much from the time it hit the market and consider myself proficient. I've also put a lot of time into building checklists and profiles in Foreflight for my Bravo, and tailored the organic Performance Plus profile to match my LOP ops almost exactly. I use the log book function as well, and have found it extremely convenient. But I put a full Garmin panel in my airplane a couple of years ago so I gave Garmin Pilot a short trial back then. I even bought a Mach 1 Pro watch so I was of a mind to go all in on Garmin

My GP trial didn't last long. I found the weather briefing capability and aircraft performance profiles in Foreflight to be superior, and those are the two things I depend on most heavily. In other words I didn't really give GP much of a chance because I almost immediately decided I didn't like it. The Leidos integration seemed clumsy compared to the Foreflight organic weather and flight plan filing integration. Flight planning in GP didn't feel intuitive and I didn't use it long enough to get comfortable with the Flight Plan/Trip Planning/Map interactions to a degree where I would have confidence I would be able to use it in the cockpit under stress. I had built a rudimentary performance profile for my airplane that worked but missed the takeoff and landing data provided in Foreflight. The TOLD isn't a huge thing, but it's a thing, and I discovered I used it in Foreflight more than I realized. In hindsight what it really came down to then is that I had invested a lot of time in, and had years of experience with Foreflight and I wasn't prepared to give that same effort to Garmin Pilot.

So now I'm investing the time and effort in GP to become proficient with it. I still don't like the weather briefing, but it works. I don't like that there is no organic performance profile for the M20M Bravo, but I can refine the rudimentary one I built or modify one provided for a different airplane in the app. I don't like that there is no TOLD support, but I can use my own TOLD charts and tables I built when I first bought the airplane. I imported all of my logbook data from Foreflight and need to compare the two to see what all dropped out and how GP Logbook measures up to what I need/want it to do. I've transitioned to using the checklist function on the G3X so I probably won't build new checklists in GP. It would be great if the .ace file format could be used in GP checklists but I haven't researched that yet. I'm having a hard time adjusting to the format and sequences for flight planning but that's just a training issue. I have a lot of negative transference from using Foreflight so long. I'll figure it out.

Oh, one thing I DID discover about GP that is important to me is GP can access external documents on iCloud. Foreflight cannot and I have to maintain a premium DropBox account for my avionics guides and other references I want through Foreflight. So if I fully transition to GP I can drop my DropBox subscription.

Comparing Foreflight to Garmin Pilot is like comparing the F-15E to the F/A-18E/F. The F-15E is more like a PC operating system where you get down into the weeds technically and have multiple ways of accomplishing most tasks, where the F/A-18 is more like a Mac where you turn it on and things just work; but you have to know HOW they work. Each one does different things better than the other, but they both get the job done well. 

 

Not true!  The F-15E does everything better!  Well, ok, except landing on a ship.

[hazek]

@Rick Junkin I think you just answered all the questions I have about GP. I'm pretty sure I don't even want to test it. I just hope FF wont get too much more expensive as I'm staying with it. It just works way too well.