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Using the Airports View
Jan. 3, 2017 share
Using the Airports View
Airport 3D View
Airport 3D View is an interactive preview that combines terrain and aerial imagery to help you get familiar with new airports anywhere in the world. Whether you're preparing for a challenging approach or daydreaming about new places to fly, 3D View provides new and unique vantage points that prepare you for the real thing.
Airport 3D View is included in ForeFlight's top-tier subscription plan. Visit https://www.foreflight.com/3d-view/ to learn more and upgrade.
AOPA FBO Fees
ForeFlight displays FBO fees from AOPA’s Airport Directory to help you make more informed flight planning decisions. Access an FBO’s fees from the FBO detail view by tapping the Fees tab. For each fee ForeFlight shows the type of fee and any notes on the left and the cost on the right. Fees that vary by aircraft type or other factors show a range of costs that you can tap into to see the full breakdown.
Alternate Advisor
ForeFlight’s Alternate Advisor simplifies the process of choosing a good alternate airport by providing a list of suggestions to help you narrow your options. Alternate Advisor is available with all ForeFlight subscription plans.
Improved Planning Features
ForeFlight now offers an enhanced flight planning workflow thanks to improvements to aircraft, the Maps view flight plan editor, and the File & Brief view, which is now called “Flights”.
This video is for ForeFlight customers with subscription plans other than Performance Plus, including the original plans and the Basic Plus and Pro Plus plans. If you have the Performance Plus plan, or want to see what is different with that plan, check out our Performance video series.
Flight Planning Enhancements
You can now preview all route options visually on an interactive map with Route Advisor. Simply tap through the list to highlight each route on the map, then tap “Select Route” to add it to your flight plan. An interactive Route Preview map in the Flights view provides a quick visual reference of your route, showing the departure and destination airports overlaid on a simple basemap with radar.
There are also enhancements to the flight planning workflow in the Flights view: the airport fields at the top have smart search functionality to help you find the right airports, and the Add Next Flight button makes it faster and easier to plan multi-leg flights by carrying forward departure, aircraft details, payload, fuel policy, and more. You can also export your flight plan in the official ICAO format and print, email, share via AirDrop, or save a copy in ForeFlight Documents.
Recommended Route Constraints
ForeFlight’s Route Advisor allows you to customize the Recommended Route using flexible route constraints, making it easy to tailor routes to your own needs. Use route constraints to set guidelines that the Recommended Route will follow when generating a new route, with options for including or avoiding certain waypoints, avoiding FIRs, and bounding the minimum and maximum altitudes for the flight. Route Constraints and the Recommended Route are available with ForeFlight Performance plans.
Using the Airports View
Alternate Advisor
ForeFlight’s Alternate Advisor simplifies the process of choosing a good alternate airport by providing a list of suggestions to help you narrow your options. Alternate Advisor is available with all ForeFlight subscription plans.
Helpful Web Features
Pack Charts & Weather on Flights
To further streamline your planning workflow on Flights, you’ll find a quick access button to Pack directly below the Flight Log. Just like the ‘suitcase’ button on the Maps view, tap ‘Pack and it will analyze your route and package up all of the charts, data, NOTAM, and weather information (including Icing and Turbulence for Pro Plus and Performance Plus customers) you’ll need to access offline during your flight.
Send FBO Fuel Orders
FBO Fuel Orders allow you to notify the destination FBO of your estimated arrival time and fuel order request using a simple form that is transmitted right from the Flights tab. Fuel Orders are available for Performance Plus and Business Performance subscribers.
Refined Fuel Planning
The fuel planning section of the Flights view has a new layout that provides more flexibility in adjusting fuel policies to hit target values. Fuel and weight planning is available with ForeFlight Performance subscription plans.
Altitude Constraints in Route Advisor
ForeFlight's Route Advisor now allows Performance subscribes to manually adjust the altitude range considered when generating the Recommended Route, allowing for more customization and personalized route suggestions.
Learn more about the Recommended Route here: https://blog.foreflight.com/2018/03/15/foreflight-recommended-route-explained/
Trip Assistant
Trip Assistant is a fast, accurate way to plan trips from door-to-door, incorporating traffic and flight times to create a detailed itinerary. In just a few clicks, calculate what time to leave your home or office address to arrive at your destination on time. Trip Assistant can help any scheduler, executive assistant, or pilot more easily collaborate and prepare for upcoming flights.
Customize the Aeronautical Map
Enabling Terrain
Basemap and Terrain Improvements
The ForeFlight map engine has a significantly upgraded basemap, which now renders more quickly, smoothly, and with sharper depiction of features such as major roads, railways, national parks, and state and national boundaries. There’s also a new “Shaded Terrain” option, which uses grayscale shading to depict terrain, providing the same level of detail as the colored terrain option with less visual distraction.
In the Map Settings menu, choose from multiple presentations: Colored, Shaded, or None.
Alternate Advisor
ForeFlight’s Alternate Advisor simplifies the process of choosing a good alternate airport by providing a list of suggestions to help you narrow your options. Alternate Advisor is available with all ForeFlight subscription plans.
Scheduled Flight Search
ForeFlight now allows you to search for aircraft tail numbers, call signs, and flight numbers on the Maps view to see recently filed flight plans.
Dark App Theme
ForeFlight now allows you to apply a dark theme to the entire app. Go to More - Settings and tap App Theme at the top, then tap Dark. This darkens the background colors on most pages while maintaining highlight colors and prominent white text, so important information is easily visible.
Aeronautical Maps Enhancements
Single Tap
Single Tap for airports, waypoints, navaids, and airways is a feature of Aeronautical Maps that allows you to quickly access information on the Maps view. With the Aeronautical layer selected, simply quick tap on any airport, waypoint, VOR, or airway to see details about it. Tap Add to Route to drop it into your route.
Global Aeronautical Maps
Global Procedure Advisor
All ForeFlight customers can now access international departures, arrivals, and approaches using Procedure Advisor, expanding the scope of ForeFlight’s global planning capabilities.
These global flight planning features are further enhanced by adding Jeppesen’s industry-leading charts to your ForeFlight account. Check out our other videos on purchasing Jeppesen charts through ForeFlight and linking an existing Jeppesen account to learn more.
Map Touch Action
Weather Layer Time Slider
ForeFlight’s radar and satellite layers now use an interactive time slider tool that provides more control when viewing and animating weather timestamps.
Icing, Turbulence, and Surface Analysis Layers
ForeFlight’s weather capabilities now include five new layers for icing, turbulence, and surface analysis forecasts, available on Pro Plus, Performance Plus, and Business Performance plans. The Icing and Turbulence layers each have a US and global option, and the Surface Analysis layer provides a global view of isobars and associated pressure readings, and a more detailed view of pressure centers, fronts, troughs, and other features for North America. All five of the new layers are also available on ForeFlight’s web application.
Opacity Sliders
Profile View
Pack Charts & Weather on Flights
To further streamline your planning workflow on Flights, you’ll find a quick access button to Pack directly below the Flight Log. Just like the ‘suitcase’ button on the Maps view, tap ‘Pack and it will analyze your route and package up all of the charts, data, NOTAM, and weather information (including Icing and Turbulence for Pro Plus and Performance Plus customers) you’ll need to access offline during your flight.
Introducing: ForeFlight 8
Send To
Managing Downloads
Trip Assistant
Trip Assistant is a fast, accurate way to plan trips from door-to-door, incorporating traffic and flight times to create a detailed itinerary. In just a few clicks, calculate what time to leave your home or office address to arrive at your destination on time. Trip Assistant can help any scheduler, executive assistant, or pilot more easily collaborate and prepare for upcoming flights.
FBOs on Taxi Charts
Send FBO Fuel Orders
FBO Fuel Orders allow you to notify the destination FBO of your estimated arrival time and fuel order request using a simple form that is transmitted right from the Flights tab. Fuel Orders are available for Performance Plus and Business Performance subscribers.
Annotating Plates and Documents
Weight & Balance
ForeFlight Mobile’s Weight & Balance feature allows you to quickly determine whether the aircraft is loaded within its envelope. ForeFlight Mobile’s smart setup interview asks questions about your aircraft and installed options to help you with configuration. Weight & Balance is a ForeFlight Mobile Pro feature.
Refined Fuel Planning
The fuel planning section of the Flights view has a new layout that provides more flexibility in adjusting fuel policies to hit target values. Fuel and weight planning is available with ForeFlight Performance subscription plans.
iPhone 2/3 View
User Map Layers
Visit foreflight.com/map-shapes for additional information about this feature and to download sample KML files.
Import Custom User Charts
In addition to user waypoints and user map layers, ForeFlight now allows you to import User Charts that you can manage and display on the map.
The User Charts feature supports MBTiles, an open source file format developed by MapBox that allows for efficient compression and distribution of large charts. The feature does not yet support vector charts, which can also use the .mbtiles extension. A great tool for creating your own MBtiles is MapTiler, which is free to download and allows you to quickly georeference and export raster charts.
Set Up Your JetFuelX Account
Altitude Constraints in Route Advisor
ForeFlight's Route Advisor now allows Performance subscribes to manually adjust the altitude range considered when generating the Recommended Route, allowing for more customization and personalized route suggestions.
Learn more about the Recommended Route here: https://blog.foreflight.com/2018/03/15/foreflight-recommended-route-explained/
Use JetFuelX to Find the Best Contract Jet Fuel Price
Managing Downloads
Send To
Improved Planning Features
ForeFlight now offers an enhanced flight planning workflow thanks to improvements to aircraft, the Maps view flight plan editor, and the File & Brief view, which is now called “Flights”.
This video is for ForeFlight customers with subscription plans other than Performance Plus, including the original plans and the Basic Plus and Pro Plus plans. If you have the Performance Plus plan, or want to see what is different with that plan, check out our Performance video series.
Basics of Flight Plan Filing (August 2021)
Join the dynamic duo of Rob MacLeod and Tim Stahl from ForeFlight's FileOps Team to learn the essentials of filing flight plans. The two walk through the entire filing process, from basic aircraft setup to route planning, filling out the flight plan form, and amending, canceling, opening, and closing flight plans. Although this webinar focuses on filing in the U.S., pilots from other countries will still find much of the material helpful to their own flying.
Introducing ForeFlight Logbook
Enhanced Documents
ForeFlight’s Documents view has an enhanced layout that makes it easier to find, download, and access documents. Documents are also included in ForeFlight’s Sync system, allowing you to access your documents, annotations, and bookmarks from any device. And finally, Documents are now supported on the iPhone, making them even more accessible. Visit https://foreflight.com/documents/ to learn more.
Customize the Aeronautical Map
Enabling Terrain
Fundamentals Course - Oshkosh July 2019
Ryan McBride, ForeFlight's lead product designer, walks you through the basics of ForeFlight, from choosing and buying an iPad, to navigating the different "views" in the app, to planning simple flights. If you're just getting started with ForeFlight, this course is for you. If you already know the basics of ForeFlight and want to explore some of the more advanced features, check out our Power Users course here.
Using the Airports View
Helpful Web Features
ForeFlight Checklist
ForeFlight Checklist integrates one of the most important inflight tools at your disposal into the app you already use for every stage of flight, reducing cockpit clutter and providing an intuitive, simple interface. Checklist is included with our Basic Plus and Pro Plus subscription plans, or as an add-on with other plans. Upgrade at foreflight.com/pricing.
iPad Setup Tips
Distance Rings
What's New Course - Oshkosh July 2019
ForeFlight Lead Product Designer Ryan McBride walks you through some of the noteworthy new features that we've recently added. For a basic overview of ForeFlight, check out the Fundamentals presentation, and for a more advanced course, watch the Power Users presentation.
Weather Layer Time Slider
ForeFlight’s radar and satellite layers now use an interactive time slider tool that provides more control when viewing and animating weather timestamps.
Icing, Turbulence, and Surface Analysis Layers
ForeFlight’s weather capabilities now include five new layers for icing, turbulence, and surface analysis forecasts, available on Pro Plus, Performance Plus, and Business Performance plans. The Icing and Turbulence layers each have a US and global option, and the Surface Analysis layer provides a global view of isobars and associated pressure readings, and a more detailed view of pressure centers, fronts, troughs, and other features for North America. All five of the new layers are also available on ForeFlight’s web application.
New Weather Imagery
This video introduces the new weather collections in the ForeFlight Mobile Imagery view.
ForeFlight Graphical Preflight Briefing
This video walks you through how to use ForeFlight's graphical preflight briefing and Navlog.
Using the Airports View
Aviation Weather Tips Every Pilot Should Know
Medium- to Long-Range Flight Planning
Color IR Satellite
SXAR1 Cloud & Echo Tops
SXAR1: SiriusXM Radio & Surface Wind Layer
Learn more about the integration with SiriusXM’s SXAR1 and find support resources at foreflight.com/siriusxm. For personal assistance with your SiriusXM account, call 1-855-838-8563.
SiriusXM Weather in ForeFlight Mobile
Related Resources

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