Foreflight sells to private equity

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Surely they will make the company more efficient and prices will fall!

www.aopa.org

Jeppesen, ForeFlight sold to private equity

Boeing Co. announced on April 22 the pending sale of Jeppesen and ForeFlight to a private equity firm, promising the deal will not disrupt service to customers.
www.aopa.org
 
No disruptions other than future updates will be terrible after they can all those expensive software engineers. At least you will likely get to pay double for the product in a few years. Anytime you see the words private equity immediately substitute Robber Barron or Corporate Raider. You can choose!
 
murphey

Thread 'it’s real-Jeppesen'

Read this morning….knew it was being considered, didn’t know it was really happening…on Seeking Alpha, a stock news source:

“The Jeppesen auction has reached its second round of bids. In late January, RTX (RTX) and Honeywell International (HON) were among those reported to be evaluating the unit. Blackstone (BX), Advent, Carlyle Group (CG), Warburg Pincus, Veritas Capital, and Thoma Bravo were also said to be interested“

This will be the 3rd (?) of the company, maybe 4th? In the last 20 years? Shame because it’s one of the few segments of Boeing that’s making lots of money. The expected...
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fffffffff.... time to switch. Reminds me of when Reiff recently was bought by Hartzell. Quoted a new engine pre-heat system on Friday but didn't buy it, found out Reiff was purchased by Hartzell over the weekend, went to order it on Monday... 20% more expensive.
 
I am a heavy Garmin user for wearable tech and scuba. Have always been happy (including a few weeks ago when they no-questions-asked replaced my air integration transmitter a year beyond warranty).
But man, I really do love ForeFlight for weather and planning.

Maybe time to give Pilot a fresh look.
 
A motto of a not-to-be-named-corporation: you can buy better but you can’t pay more
 
PE firms are the kiss of death for customer service and product quality. The only questions are 1) whom can we cut, 2) what features can we eliminate, and 3) how much can we increase our revenue before our customer base abandons us. I thought selling out to Boeing was bad news, but this is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
 
The only good news in this is that PE doesn't know enough about the aviation market to understand just how cheap all us wealthy pilots are. They will likely find out pretty quickly!
 
Learnin’ to fly… said:
I am a heavy Garmin user for wearable tech and scuba. Have always been happy (including a few weeks ago when they no-questions-asked replaced my air integration transmitter a year beyond warranty).
But man, I really do love ForeFlight for weather and planning.

Maybe time to give Pilot a fresh look.
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GP is great with my iPad but I understand the experience is pretty underwhelming with Android.
 
Dang, and I just about to upgrade to the second tier. I guess I’ll wait a while now.
 
While I'm not at all a fan of private equity, it sounds like Thoma Bravo's strategy is normally to buy mature software products and then attempt to increase market share. ForeFlight's share is already overwhelming as far as EFBs go, but they have a lot of potential when it comes to things on the commercial side. ForeFlight Dispatch is a great tool, but it still lacks aircraft scheduling, maintenance tracking, and other features that could be merged in via other strategic acquisitions (FlightDocs maybe?).

Or, they could look to use ForeFlight's expertise in good UI for aviation and get into the hardware market to give Garmin a real competitor.

While that doesn't mean things will drastically improve for us little guys, hopefully we'll get taken along for the ride in a good way.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
While I'm not at all a fan of private equity, it sounds like Thoma Bravo's strategy is normally to buy mature software products and then attempt to increase market share. ForeFlight's share is already overwhelming as far as EFBs go, but they have a lot of potential when it comes to things on the commercial side. ForeFlight Dispatch is a great tool, but it still lacks aircraft scheduling, maintenance tracking, and other features that could be merged in via other strategic acquisitions (FlightDocs maybe?).

Or, they could look to use ForeFlight's expertise in good UI for aviation and get into the hardware market to give Garmin a real competitor.

While that doesn't mean things will drastically improve for us little guys, hopefully we'll get taken along for the ride in a good way.
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They could increase their share by not being a bunch of lazy-ass programmers. Although, honestly, I hate the UI on it and GP.
 
Been a foreflight user from the start,can’t imagine that the prices would go down. I now need the basic package as I get older. It’s been a good product especially when I was flying IFR
 
AlleyCat67 said:
GP is great with my iPad but I understand the experience is pretty underwhelming with Android.
Click to expand...

Confirmed! :) Android was my original reason for going GP -- I wanted "the option" to move to a high-end android tablet, which was never a thing. Some of the samsungs came close, but were still sorta lame vs. the ipad.

I had GP on my android phone as a backup. When I cracked my iPad at the start of a long XC, I learned that the android GP doesn't do any meaningful ADS-B in connectivity, or at least, none of the devices I had thoughtfully brought along. So it was not very useful in-flight.

That discovery actually got me to switch to iOS. GP works great on an iphone.
 
Jeff767 said:
No disruptions other than future updates will be terrible after they can all those expensive software engineers. At least you will likely get to pay double for the product in a few years. Anytime you see the words private equity immediately substitute Robber Barron or Corporate Raider. You can choose!
Click to expand...
How about blood-sucking vampires?
 
I renewed my subscription today as the price is likely going up soon. I use ForeFlight every day in personal flying and as a CFI.
 
farangutan said:
I finally left flyQ after they sold to private equity and bought foreflight days ago... My luck.
At least I got a discount.
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I've been using flyQ for years and it has steadily gotten better. most of FFs benefits are on the IFR side which i don't need.

Avare is a good moving map but lacking in flight planning.

if you have Garmin the FF is the only real answer. i don't plan on using Garmin so i really don't need tight integration.
 
Well I re-upped last week. I don’t have much hope they aren’t going to shoot prices up dramatically.
 
I believe this won’t actually close until maybe Q4, and then it’s likely to be a few months before they change the rates - there is time.
 
Side note, there hasn't been a new feature added to ForeFlight since Oct 2024. For quite some time there was a new feature rolled out every month. I do miss my monthly enhancements. Having said that, I do get it will only get harder to add new features to a very mature piece of software.
 
Low Level Flyer said:
Side note, there hasn't been a new feature added to ForeFlight since Oct 2024. For quite some time there was a new feature rolled out every month. I do miss my monthly enhancements. Having said that, I do get it will only get harder to add new features to a very mature piece of software.
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Boeing isn’t exactly flush with spare cash these days.

As for VC, IMHO they suck. I worked for a company that was bought out by venture capitalists, they sucked money from the company and then deviously shut us down during Christmas week when everyone was off.

Came back to work to find the plant shut down and the doors chained. Merry Christmas! And, they had filed bankruptcy on the company.

Everyone got shafted on their last 2 weeks paycheck and shafted on whatever their vacation balance was. Fother muckers.
 
pfarber said:
I've been using flyQ for years and it has steadily gotten better. most of FFs benefits are on the IFR side which i don't need.

Avare is a good moving map but lacking in flight planning.

if you have Garmin the FF is the only real answer. i don't plan on using Garmin so i really don't need tight integration.
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I prefer using flyQ and it has gotten better over the years. I've been getting some freezing up while using it lately that only goes away with a device reboot, or the WX briefing fails to load/refresh. Could just mean I need to reset my ipad and start fresh. However, I started teaching instrument students and they all use foreflight so I switched in part to learn the software they're using and a future employer will likely provide or expect me to use it.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
Even after Avare tripled their price I chose to stick with them. This news will probably get Avare to ratchet up their fees again. Sigh…

:D
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The IOS version is better than the android but flight planning is still very very poorly done.... that or I'm not doing it right. Its a good moving map but that's about it.
 
Bill said:
Boeing isn’t exactly flush with spare cash these days.

As for VC, IMHO they suck. I worked for a company that was bought out by venture capitalists, they sucked money from the company and then deviously shut us down during Christmas week when everyone was off.

Came back to work to find the plant shut down and the doors chained. Merry Christmas! And, they had filed bankruptcy on the company.

Everyone got shafted on their last 2 weeks paycheck and shafted on whatever their vacation balance was. Fother muckers.
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VC and PE are very, very different animals. As a general rule, if you didn't like VCs, you're gonna hate PEs.

To a first approximation, VCs are at least trying to build a business to get to an exit. PEs are trying to suck the marrow out of the bones before leaving the skeleton to rot in the sun.

Now that said, someone earlier on this thread said the PE in this deal has a history of actually trying to own and manage businesses, so hopefully they will continue to buck the stereotype.
 
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pfarber said:
The IOS version is better than the android but flight planning is still very very poorly done.... that or I'm not doing it right. Its a good moving map but that's about it.
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I agree re planning, which is why I just do that on Skyvector (and actually file directly on 1-800).

There are a lot smoother ways of doing the tasks than how I do it but it works.

The other benefit to me of Avare is that it takes ADS-B from non-Garmin sources. I have a FreeFlight RANGR so I get traffic from that plus traffic from a GDL 50/Aera 660. I’m always surprised at how neither gives a complete picture. And that said, Avare’s NEXRAD is pretty much useless
 
Boeing, or Jeppesen also have the Jepp FD pro program. Quite a few Airlines use that. Has some things fore flight didn't, but no fuel calculations the last time I used it. I could see a merger of the two systems to get a great program.

I liked the taxi charts. They had a provision to input you're wing span, then it would highlight taxiways you were to wide for.
 
pfarber said:
The IOS version is better than the android but flight planning is still very very poorly done.... that or I'm not doing it right. Its a good moving map but that's about it.
Click to expand...

Been using Avare for a while now but I didn't even know about AvareX. I just installed it and I agree - either I'm a moron, or the flight planning process on this thing is just plain dumb. Those two options are not mutually exclusive.
 
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