WingX lands award

MediaPost’s Appy Awards are most often noted in press releases, much less frequently in the actual press, as evidenced by a Google news search. Lest readers get carried away by the enthusiastic May 19 press release from Hilton Software announcing the award, a bit of context: WingX Pro7 has for years ranked among the most popular aviation downloads for the Apple iPad, but was the only aviation app among the nearly 120 finalists for a 2016 Appy Award. WingX Pro7 was one of three finalists in the “Mapping/Location-based” category that also included Egglist, which helps users buy and sell fresh, local eggs; and PIPS Rewards, which offers users electronic “rewards” for doing good things. (PIPs are “Positive Impact Points,” according to the developer, and are earned by shopping from eco-friendly sources or reducing paper use, among other things.)

Still, major corporations like Coca-Cola, Lufthansa (which produces an app that allows users to book flights and store boarding passes), Home Depot, and Heineken were among the Appy Awards finalists and winners, so Hilton Software is keeping good company in that regard.

“We are grateful to pilots across the United States for making WingX Pro7 the top-grossing Navigation app on the Apple App Store for the past five years,” Hilton Software founder and CEO Hilton Goldstein said in the press release. There, too, an asterisk seems appropriate: WingX Pro7 does not compete directly with ForeFlight, in terms of rankings. App Annie, an online service which tracks downloads, revenue, and other data for mobile applications across Apple and Android platforms, lists WingX in the “Navigation” apps category, while ForeFlight Mobile is listed in the “Weather” apps category.

Both have dominated their respective categories in iPad revenue for several years (WingX loses some rank relative to other "navigation" apps when looking at iPhone downloads).

From a user's standpoint, comparing WingX head-to-head against other EFBs is much like pitting Piper against Cessna. They get the job done, have similar qualities and features, and much of the choice between them depends on pilot preference.

WingX Pro7 has been available for Android devices for about a year, and added Amazon Kindle Fire support in October.

The app includes a highly compressed map database which is a strong selling point for users of devices with limited storage space, and its flight data recording tool (added in 2014) can record GPS and Attitude Heading and Reference System (AHRS) data from various sources.The company more recently added (and trademarked) a feature called traca (pronounced trace-a) that allows users to create custom waypoints with a finger press and automatically add them to an active route.