Big layoffs reported at ForeFlight.

[Jeff Uphoff]

Apparently, private equity plans on moving most engineering overseas.

"With no warning we were all fired yesterday morning via email. I would expect worsening service over the coming weeks and months, as many engineering teams who supported various features were simply removed with no opportunity for knowledge transfer. This happened due to ForeFlight's sale to private equity (Thoma Bravo) last year, who plans to move all engineering offshore. ForeFlight was an incredible company to work for with amazing benefits and so much emphasis on pilot safety and support as well as product quality. This is a huge shame and disappointment and many incredible engineers lost their jobs."

https://www.reddit.com/r/Foreflight/comments/1qdjx1x/foreflight_laid_off_4050_of_its_employees/

--Up.

[TangoTango]

I'm feeling good about my decision to use Garmin Pilot now. If that story is true, it will be the beginning of the end for Foreflight.

[KSMooniac]

That's not good.  I switched to FF from GP several years ago and have really grown to like it.  I expect GP or some other upstart will grow past FF in the coming years now.

[varlajo]

I switched to GP the day after the Thoma Bravo transaction had been reported. Looks like I wasn't wrong. 

[dkkim73]

OOuuuuch. 

Subscription set to renew early Feb. Had been paying for the Premium. Now have some decisions to make. I think the flight planning profiles would be the biggest thing missing from GP from my last look. 

For those who move off Foreflight and have a Sentry, what have you chosen as an external ADS-B box? StratuX? 

 

[N201MKTurbo]

Well that sucks. I have met a few of their developers at different aviation events. They all seemed very good and dedicated. 
I will stick with it till it turns to crap. I think I will download my logbook just in case.

[Ragsf15e]

46 minutes ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Well that sucks. I have met a few of their developers at different aviation events. They all seemed very good and dedicated. 
I will stick with it till it turns to crap. I think I will download my logbook just in case.

Agree, and their customer support/response time has been great in my experience.

[EricJ]

53 minutes ago, dkkim73 said:

For those who move off Foreflight and have a Sentry, what have you chosen as an external ADS-B box? StratuX? 

I don't have a Sentry, but I use a Stratux for my EFB ADS-B-in with iFly or Avare.

 

[hammdo]

I have sentry and stratus 3. This PE firing folks is not new. I’ve seen it many times in my career. All the knowledge leaves and those ‘offshore’ (usually Indian contractors/firms) pic up from there. FF is on the slide and this PE firm will probably suck out as much as it can, use FF for leverage to acquire other assets and then kill FF it in a few years or sell its ashes.

The firing is to make it look more profitable and show how good it does with less local resources.  At least the PE company waited until after the holidays but you can be sure this was planned right from the start..

-Don

[Slick Nick]

What’s with all the “sky is falling” doom and gloom? It doesn’t mean ForeFlight is going to disappear, perhaps they’re just “trimming the fat” now that they’re part of a larger company, there may be a lot of overlap with other redundant positions. 

[bonal]

Certainly not a good thing and I wonder if has anything to do with the emails advising about the requirement for iOS 18…. To run the program moving forward.  My iPad is still in a 17 and I can’t run the update due to insufficient storage or whatever the correct terminology is. I haven’t received the email but I’m sure I will at some point.  Back when I was shopping for a flight planning app I also checked wingx is anyone using it and if so what are your thoughts on it 

[Ragsf15e]

2 minutes ago, bonal said:

Certainly not a good thing and I wonder if has anything to do with the emails advising about the requirement for iOS 18…. To run the program moving forward.  My iPad is still in a 17 and I can’t run the update due to insufficient storage or whatever the correct terminology is. I haven’t received the email but I’m sure I will at some point.  Back when I was shopping for a flight planning app I also checked wingx is anyone using it and if so what are your thoughts on it 

You will still be able to run FF on ios 17.  You won’t be able to get updated versions (maps/charts will still update).  This is fairly common as older iOS versions don’t support new features on the app.  I’m still using a mini from ~2014 and ff (old version) works fine.

[dkkim73]

38 minutes ago, Slick Nick said:

What’s with all the “sky is falling” doom and gloom? It doesn’t mean ForeFlight is going to disappear, perhaps they’re just “trimming the fat” now that they’re part of a larger company, there may be a lot of overlap with other redundant positions. 

Everybody just be quiet. Absolutely do not tell Nick about Santa Claus... 

[ArtVandelay]

What’s with all the “sky is falling” doom and gloom? It doesn’t mean ForeFlight is going to disappear, perhaps they’re just “trimming the fat” now that they’re part of a larger company, there may be a lot of overlap with other redundant positions. 

This is standard for big companies, buy a mature business, move support and other non technical skills offshore, save $, bank profits, and hope no one notices the lack of new functionality in less common version updates.
India because of their English language skills would be my first bet.

[KSMooniac]

Dumping the logbook now is likely a very wise move.  I'll do that this weekend.

It won't turn to crap overnight, but over time it surely will fail to innovate and set the bar.  It will get lapped by one or more competitors.  Since it was created by pilots and many of there staff are/were pilots, they'll lose that intuitive sense of what is useful and what is not since the offshore workforce will with 99% certainty NOT be pilots.  They're not cranking out an app for a bank or e-commerce site and eventually that will show up in product quality.

[hammdo]

Ditto, already working on exporting… LogTen is what I’ll be looking at. Expect ForeFlight to focus on more corporate users and less on us ‘little’ GA flyers… we, overall, don’t  add a lot of revenue to their bottom line..

-Don

[Jackk]

 

 

 Fired employees said the company that got rid of them is never going to make it now?  Never happened before! lol

 

 I’ll stick with Foreflight as it’s just better, I also have a monthly logbook backup sent to my email so even in the near nil possibility of DOOOOM, at worst it’s a very mild inconvenience. 

[flyboy0681]

Well, this was predictable.

It won't be long before you call FF support and get a staticy connection to India with the person on the other end answering in a thick Indian accent "Helooo, this is John, how cood I hlp you?"

[Jackk]

4 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

Well, this was predictable.

It won't be long before you call FF support and get a staticy connection to India with the person on the other end answering in a thick Indian accent "Helooo, this is John, how cood I hlp you?"

 You used to call foreflight?!

 

 I have never been able to get phone support for FF, the email support has always been very bare bones 

 

 Too many 135s and .mil use FF for them to kill foreflight, that would be paying a lot of money to just burn the money. FF really has a lock on nearly all but the 121 market (jeppro)

 

I could see them not improving logbook, but really it’s just a log, it cost near nil to keep it, they never really had much invested in supporting it, tons of .mil guys use it.  There isn’t a logical reason they would remove it vs just leave it as it is and just not invest anything into adding any features to it.

[hammdo]

This is what the CEO of FF said right after the PE company bought it - via AvBrief link

https://avbrief.com/mass-layoffs-reported-at-foreflight/

https://avbrief.com/jeppesen-foreflight-ai-in-the-future/

 

[MikeOH]

Not happy with this news.

Not happy with them not supporting my "old" iPad.

Not happy with GP being my option.

Guess I'm just going to keep using FF until it goes to crap.

[Fly Boomer]

4 hours ago, Jeff Uphoff said:

Apparently, private equity plans on moving most engineering overseas.

Extremely unfortunate for ForeFlight aficionados including me, but it will allow Garmin to slack off a little.  They can still stay ahead of the competition, but with fewer people and less effort.  Or they can just buy the competition. 

[Jackk]

Can someone explain to me how this changes anything lol

 

 I had a old iPad that I didn’t want to upgrade iOS on years and years back, before foreflight sold to Boeing, I had the same issue if I wanted to install the newest version of FF

 

 I really don’t see how any of this is breaking new grounds 

[Schllc]

Garmin would be wise to provide an easy and seamless way to facilitate migration of logbooks from FF. 
To be perfectly honest, this is a task I am simply not looking forward to and if it was easy I would probably switch, I know I am not alone here. 
for what it’s worth, I know how to do it, and I know I can, I just also know there will be a lot of errors and or omissions that have to be fixed. 
I don’t want to be bothered with the errand at present. 

[hammdo]

2 hours ago, Fly Boomer said:

Extremely unfortunate for ForeFlight aficionados including me, but it will allow Garmin to slack off a little.  They can still stay ahead of the competition, but with fewer people and less effort.  Or they can just buy the competition. 

Or, Garmin could hire a few of these folks too…

-Don