Originally Posted by
Dave Gittins
Has anybody tried it ? If I do go back to flying in the US of A and need a Foreflight, would it be worth adding the UK maps as well ?
We use Foreflight since Jeppesen has shut down it's Jeppesen mobile flightdeck app earlier this year. Overall it offers a lot for a very reasonable amount of money. Especially if you can live with the free IFR charts from the various national AIPs. For many european countries VFR charts are also included in the basic subscription (see here:
https://foreflight.com/europe/data/) but NOT for the UK and Gemany (where I am based). These have to be purchased separately, eg. 63Euos/year for the UK or 150 for all of Europe. Depending on how far you fly from Redhill this may cost you less than buying all the ICAO VFR charts that you require. Beware that running Foreflight on an iPad continuously in order to have your VFR chart ready all the time puts a heavy strain on the batteries, which may last only two hours. So you will need a connection to a power source (aircraft or powerbank) or some kind of backup. You are allowed to install one Foreflight subscription on two iPads and one iPhone, so if you already have a second device this should cover the backup requirement.
Regarding (IFR) flight planning and flight plan filing we use Foreflight at the flying school where I instruct. It works nicely for short flights to neighbouring airfields. But at work, just like His dudeness already wrote above, we get our flight planning done by a provider. Too many PPRs, airport slots, route restrictions etc. to take care of. Especially if you are already sitting in the plane with the passengers in the back and ATC informs you that "there is a problem with your flight plan" or that you just got a 90 minute CTOT for no obvious reason. With a service provider you call one number and they sort it out for you while you keep your passengers happy.