Foreflight Decides Not To Work

VWGhiaBob

VWGhiaBob

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VWGhiaBob
So after reading all the great reviews of Foreflight, I decided to use it for my cross country yesterday from KVNY to KMHV. (As an aside, KMHV rocks...no traffic, an amazing airliner "boneyard", long runways, etc.).

Well, shortly after take off, Foreflight "froze" and stopped tracking my flight. "Oh s&(*" came to mind. I finished the trip with dead reckoning, as there's no convenient VOR at KMHV.

Question is...did I do something wrong? One person told me I shouldn't have turned off Wi-Fi, because that turns off GPS. But in another forum, there's a recommendation to turn off Wi-Fi to save battery life (Foreflight drains a battery faster than any other app I've used...as I've read in other postings here).

I thought Foreflight was FAA-approved for navigation. Do folks really use it for nav, and is my experience isolated? Or should I buy one of the external GPS / Weather trackers???

Thanks for any advice!
 
VWGhiaBob said:
I thought Foreflight was FAA-approved for navigation.
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Foreflight is a situational awareness tool, and is not "FAA-approved". It also isn't "FAA-disallowed". It is not required for flight and you shouldn't depend on it as a primary source of navigation. You should probably also do some short easy flights to make sure everything is working before using it on a long cross country. Sounds like that was not a big problem for you though.

Disabling WIFI does not disable the GPS.

Try contacting Foreflight support! http://www.foreflight.com/support/

Finally, try walking around outside with Foreflight running. The software doesn't know you're in an airplane, and should work the same way on the ground pretty much. See if you have issues doing that.
 
Try closing out the program then re-opening it, or shutting off the iPad and turning it back on. Also a bluetooth GPS is often needed to get an accurate location rather than the internal GPS.
 
I've had zero issues with the nav accuracy using the internal GPS. It's more than accurate enough for VFR navigation purposes. I always have a backup though, VORs or just looking out the window.
 
If you don't know how something works, and how to clear a lockup, you should not be using it in an airplane for anything other than amusement purposes. . . .

While FF is not certified and the iPad is not either, at least for NAV, as others have noted the program prob got some bad data or got stuck in a loop waiting for data.

You need to terminate the state of the program and restart it.

the way to do this is press the home button to close out the program to the home screen.

Then press the Home button twice to bring up the list of programs at the bottom of the screen -

then press and hold FF program icon with your finger until the little red 'minus' sign appears - then close FF. While you are at it - close the state on everything else as well to free up as much memory as possible.

Then re-open FF.

I have seen lockups with bluetooth GPS - never with wifi. Never rely on the onboard GPS -
 
I hate to ask this... but... do you have a 3G/4G/Cellular iPad? The cheaper wi-fi only version does NOT have any built-in GPS chip. You might get very basic location services from the wi-fi but as soon as your airborne you won't get anything.
 
You shouldn't need a VOR at the field to find it. VORs are useful for much more than tracking directly to the station. Learn how to find a point using crossed radials.

Pilotage will be quicker. NEVER just follow the magenta line.

These types of failures are quite common, despite some online claims I've seen. I had a bluetooth GPS give up the ghost 1/3 of the way through my last cross country, over MOD enroute over the Sierra. I proceeded to Yosemite Valley by following a radial, and then over the mountains via pilotage.

Always have at least two methods of navigation at your disposal VFR. And question the toy strapped to your knee. It WILL lie to you.

iPads are approved for some Part 121 operations as electronic flight bags. That means reading documents such as charts, OpsSpecs, etc. Not navigation. And some redundancy is required.
 
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Thanks for the advice, everyone. Lesson learned on this one! Ted...I have the full monty 64mb 4G.
 
Did you (by chance) use airplane mode? That will turn off the internal GPS. I found no reason to purchase a standalone GPS for FF. works fine. YRMV.
 
comanchepilot said:
If you don't know how something works, and how to clear a lockup, you should not be using it in an airplane for anything other than amusement purposes. . . .
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This sounds harsh but it's not. It's reality for using equipment. I wouldn't even suggest anyone use a paper sectional chart in the airplane until one knows what it has and how to read it. That's why cross country is generally later in training for student pilots.
 
MAKG1 said:
Pilotage will be quicker. NEVER just follow the magenta line.

Always have at least two methods of navigation at your disposal VFR. And question the toy strapped to your knee. It WILL lie to you.
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Well said!
 
Unlucky.

I've been using FF for about 16 months now, and am very happy. It has crashed twice during flight (in about 150 hours of flying), and in each case it was simply a matter of restarting the app, which really isn't that big of a deal.

Hard to beat for convenience at the price. But I do agree - it cannot be your only navaid. If you don't have ANY other form, then a paper chart is a necessary backup (although I would use - and have used in one plane I've flown - iPad/FF as primary at that point, rather than the other way around).

In my plane there is the 430W, then a 496 on top, then the iPad as a secondary backup... which all in all makes me feel comfortable overall. The way I end up using them is a combination of the 430 (for situational awareness - especially terrain, GPS alt, and straight line nav) and FF for what I can best term "overall trip awareness" (where am I big picture), weather, airport diagrams, freqs, services and such. Oh, and then there's my phone which is a tertiary backup, and also to update Facebook enroute :)
 
In general, with my IPAD2,
The internal GPS works fine. Almost no problems unless I set it on the floor for a while. Then it MIGHT take a minute or two to reacquire.
Even with Foreflight running in moving map mode, I can get 7 hours or more out of the IPAD. The Iphone is a different story.
If it does hang up and I try all the rest of the tricks mentioned, it only takes a minute to reboot.
But remember what was said about closing apps to save memory:

Press the home button twice:
Then hold your finger on any of the app icons on the bottom until they shake with a red minus sign. Then touch ALL the red minus buttons to close everything. Even with your 64GBs, if an app has a memory leak it can grab and hold all your memory and cause your other apps to hang.
 
midlifeflyer said:
This sounds harsh but it's not. It's reality for using equipment. I wouldn't even suggest anyone use a paper sectional chart in the airplane until one knows what it has and how to read it. That's why cross country is generally later in training for student pilots.
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Yep. Not harsh at all.

And have a few quarters in your pocket, too, just in case you have to land in Podunk after hours where there's no self-service fuel and no cell service or your cell died - just a pay phone in the terminal building/shack with a hand-written note above the phone stating the after hours number to call and get fuel.

Not that I would ever get myself in that kind of situation.
 
poweroff360 said:
Yep. Not harsh at all.

And have a few quarters in your pocket, too, just in case you have to land in Podunk after hours where there's no self-service fuel and no cell service or your cell died - just a pay phone in the terminal building/shack with a hand-written note above the phone stating the after hours number to call and get fuel.
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More than once I found myself at an unattended airport with no cell service. The last time it took me almost an hour to untangle the ground cable enough to reach a ground point with my plane nudged right up to the station.

poweroff360 said:
Not that I would ever get myself in that kind of situation.
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Yeah, that's what I figured!
 
I picked up a mini recently and have used foreflight on a few XCs. It claims 5m accuracy on the internal gps and hasn't flaked on me (ironically, I have seen the MFD flake temporarily on two occasions in two different aircraft types). I disabled 4G and bluetooth but did not disable wifi, but battery life was a nonissue anyway.
 
I've got about 80 hrs flying with ipad2 and Stratus w/Foreflight. The accuracy has never been less than 1-2 meters. I've never experienced a software lockup while flying and actually used the dual charging adapter for both on a night flight recently. However, as mentioned above I don't begin the flight with the iPad in mind as a primary nav. The real convenience is for the charts, especially for those of us without four hands and/or no autopilot. The iPaper is folded nearby. :wink2:

One thing I realized pretty quickly is that you've gotta put the time in learning about the electronic device thoroughly.

FBA
 
I had mine shut down unexpectedly at least 3 times in the last 24 hours. The most recent was during which I was bouncing between looking up freq's and had the approach plate up during an IFR flight. I said screw it, stowed the iPad, and pulled out the paper, (I had a helmet/headset fire smoldering already... I'm an instrument student)... I attributed it to a software bug in the latest drop, as I've never had an issue before.
 
jesse said:
What are you talking about?
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I purchased the Foreflight app in December of 2008 for $75.00. It was the highest price app in the iTunes catalog at that time but I saw that it had great potential and was willing to pay for it and be a loyal customer. Flash forward a couple of years and now Foreflight sees that they are leaving money on the table by not charging for updates like some other apps do. Instead of grandfathering me and the other founding customers into their new pricing scheme like a decent business would do they just flat out decide to shut down the app that I had paid for and render it absolutely useless.

Just like building contractor that quotes you one price for a job but then tries to go back on their word after they realize they're not making as much money as they thought they could. Foreflight lost me as customer forever on that day.
 
Art VanDelay said:
Just like building contractor that quotes you one price for a job but then tries to go back on their word after they realize they're not making as much money as they thought they could. Foreflight lost me as customer forever on that day.
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You mean like when they added a completely new feature like geo referenced plates? You wanted that for $75 because you bought their program before they added on the geo-ref? Who are you, George Costanza?
 
comanchepilot said:
You mean like when they added a completely new feature like geo referenced plates? You wanted that for $75 because you bought their program before they added on the geo-ref? Who are you, George Costanza?
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No, I just wanted what I originally paid for to keep working and be supported as per the original agreement. What a concept !
 
Art VanDelay said:
No, I just wanted what I originally paid for to keep working and be supported as per the original agreement. What a concept !
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Have you spoken to their Customer Service and explained the situation? I'm surprised they left an early adopter like you out in the breeze. I don't know the original offering, but it sounds like they offered the app for $75 and gave you the charts/maps as part of the package. Today the app is free, but you pay for the database on a subscription basis and the app is updated free. Is that what happened to you?

If it is, is it your expectation they give you free charts/maps for life?
 
Art VanDelay said:
I purchased the Foreflight app in December of 2008 for $75.00. It was the highest price app in the iTunes catalog at that time but I saw that it had great potential and was willing to pay for it and be a loyal customer. Flash forward a couple of years and now Foreflight sees that they are leaving money on the table by not charging for updates like some other apps do. Instead of grandfathering me and the other founding customers into their new pricing scheme like a decent business would do they just flat out decide to shut down the app that I had paid for and render it absolutely useless.

Just like building contractor that quotes you one price for a job but then tries to go back on their word after they realize they're not making as much money as they thought they could. Foreflight lost me as customer forever on that day.
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I was flying with my CFI on Sunday and he complained about the same thing. He was promised that features would come along after purchase and he would be able to upgrade to them. Then, he was told that the features would not become available because of legal entanglements with the FAA. Now, they are available, but only if you purchase a new system. And the old system no longer works.

He was not a happy camper about that.
 
Marauder said:
Have you spoken to their Customer Service and explained the situation? I'm surprised they left an early adopter like you out in the breeze. I don't know the original offering, but it sounds like they offered the app for $75 and gave you the charts/maps as part of the package. Today the app is free, but you pay for the database on a subscription basis and the app is updated free. Is that what happened to you?

If it is, is it your expectation they give you free charts/maps for life?
Click to expand...

I am a big fan of Foreflight the program, and of the company in general. In my experience they provide excellent customer support. However, this issue from years ago is a bit of a black eye and I'm not surprised they did lose customers. The deal was $75 one time charge. It's not that hard to believe since there are other aviation maps programs which are completely free (i.e. it wasn't "too good to be true"). But, when they went to a yearly subscription, even though it's a reasonable price all things considered, it really angered those who had paid for it as a one-time thing and now *lost* functionality.

Should have handled it differently.
 
Art VanDelay said:
I purchased the Foreflight app in December of 2008 for $75.00. It was the highest price app in the iTunes catalog at that time but I saw that it had great potential and was willing to pay for it and be a loyal customer. Flash forward a couple of years and now Foreflight sees that they are leaving money on the table by not charging for updates like some other apps do. Instead of grandfathering me and the other founding customers into their new pricing scheme like a decent business would do they just flat out decide to shut down the app that I had paid for and render it absolutely useless.

Just like building contractor that quotes you one price for a job but then tries to go back on their word after they realize they're not making as much money as they thought they could. Foreflight lost me as customer forever on that day.
Click to expand...

No building contractor is going to continue to make improvements to your property in perpetuity for the original purchase price, nor can they be reasonably be expected to cover the costs of unexpected problems which they uncover as part of the project.

With that being said, at a minimum, ForeFlight owes an explanation to early adopters as to why the initial model changed. Perhaps that explanation has already been provided. Keep in mind that ForeFlight was a startup company, and in many ways, still remains one today. Their business processes aren't the most mature, and like most startups, their survival is dependant on a certain ability to rapidly respond to unanticipated challenges in the business.

ForeFlight does have the most refined and reliable app-based product on the market today. They've done an amazing job with "fit and finish," and their support is responsive, if not always very helpful (I still have to push, push, push sometimes). But at least they provide someone to push on, unlike the folks at WingX, who didn't respond to even ONE of my multiple e-mails to them over a 3 month period. If it takes a new pricing model to keep them around, as long as they remain competitive, then I'm all for it. I do agree that any changes should be communicated well, and transitions should be graceful, though it sounds like perhaps that did not happen in the past.


JKG
 
There is a bug with ios 6 and FF, and location services. Apparently external GPS devices are having problems communicating with FF. It's very frustrating, and has pretty much rendered it useless as a moving map for me. I just found out they have a procedure to work around this, but have yet to try it in flight.
 
thegazelle said:
There is a bug with ios 6 and FF, and location services. Apparently external GPS devices are having problems communicating with FF. It's very frustrating, and has pretty much rendered it useless as a moving map for me. I just found out they have a procedure to work around this, but have yet to try it in flight.
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and easily fixed if you follow the instructions on the FF site . . ..
 
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