Foreflight for airline passenger Nav Log and weather briefing

NoHeat

NoHeat

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On an iPad, when I view an airline flight's route in the FlightAware app, there's a convenient button to click that causes ForeFlight to open, with the exact route and altitude copied into it. FF and FlightAware have been that way for at least two years. I do it so that as a passenger I can enjoy I enjoy tracking our route live, using gps from a window seat.

As two small improvements, in FF today I:
- created an aircraft profile that I call "airline" with performance numbers for a Boeing.
- packed for the trip to get winds aloft.
With that combination, my Nav Log on Foreflight was accurate within a few minutes at every waypoint, even on a five-hour flight from Alaska. I started the timer on my wristwatch at takeoff, and the waypoints happened just when the Nav Log predicted.

Today I also discovered that before departure I can also get a FF weather briefing for my airline flight, just by clicking the obvious button in FF.

All this high-quality cockpit-quality info and navigation, from a passenger window seat, with just a few touches of the finger. It's amazing, really.
 
NoHeat said:
On an iPad, when I view an airline flight's route in the FlightAware app, there's a convenient button to click that causes ForeFlight to open, with the exact route and altitude copied into it. FF and FlightAware have been that way for at least two years. I do it so that as a passenger I can enjoy I enjoy tracking our route live, using gps from a window seat.

As two small improvements, in FF today I:
- created an aircraft profile that I call "airline" with performance numbers for a Boeing.
- packed for the trip to get winds aloft.
With that combination, my Nav Log on Foreflight was accurate within a few minutes at every waypoint, even on a five-hour flight from Alaska. I started the timer on my wristwatch at takeoff, and the waypoints happened just when the Nav Log predicted.

Today I also discovered that before departure I can also get a FF weather briefing for my airline flight, just by clicking the obvious button in FF.

All this high-quality cockpit-quality info and navigation, from a passenger window seat, with just a few touches of the finger. It's amazing, really.
Click to expand...

I did this the other day coming back from Tahoe! It was really cool and quite fun. I am an instrument student so I followed us on the BRUSR1 STAR into KPHX and read the chart as we went...fun practice. Of course I put it away when they told us to put large electronics away.

Where did you get your airline performance numbers from?
 
I just guessed at the performance numbers.

Of course performance will actually depend on temperature, weight, altitude, etc, while FF only allows one average value for climb rate, one average value for speed during climb, and one value for cruise speed. For example you could guess 320 knots at 1900 ft/min for the climb to 35,000 ft, and a cruise of 460 knots. I'm sure an airline pilot here can offer some more realistic numbers.
 
Last edited:
NoHeat said:
On an iPad, when I view an airline flight's route in the FlightAware app, there's a convenient button to click that causes ForeFlight to open, with the exact route and altitude copied into it. FF and FlightAware have been that way for at least two years. I do it so that as a passenger I can enjoy I enjoy tracking our route live, using gps from a window seat.

As two small improvements, in FF today I:
- created an aircraft profile that I call "airline" with performance numbers for a Boeing.
- packed for the trip to get winds aloft.
With that combination, my Nav Log on Foreflight was accurate within a few minutes at every waypoint, even on a five-hour flight from Alaska. I started the timer on my wristwatch at takeoff, and the waypoints happened just when the Nav Log predicted.

Today I also discovered that before departure I can also get a FF weather briefing for my airline flight, just by clicking the obvious button in FF.

All this high-quality cockpit-quality info and navigation, from a passenger window seat, with just a few touches of the finger. It's amazing, really.
Click to expand...
Nice.... I only wish we had that in the cockpit.
 
I believe anyone can create a URL that will open a specifically encoded route in ForeFlight.
 
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