Integration with my EFB app and included with my AOPA Membership? That was the number one question from members at this year’s AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI. With new, innovative features, the AOPA Flight Planning Tools are more popular than ever and members have access to all the tools with their AOPA membership! Eric Rush of AOPA’s Flight Planning Products team talks about this valuable membership benefit and some of the new features only available in the AOPA Flight Planner.
We talked to more members and pilots about flight planning tools this year at AirVenture than any other year! By far, the number one question we were asked was: How much is the subscription? Many members did not know that all of the AOPA Flight Planning tools are included with their membership! The family of products includes the AOPA Flight Planner, AOPA Airports Directory, AOPA Weather and the AOPA GO mobile app. All these tools work together to provide a comprehensive flight planning experience and provide unique and innovative features not found in other products.
Integration with my EFB app too? Yep! Members were also very pleased to learn that the AOPA Flight Planner is capable of sending saved flight plans to six popular EFB apps. These EFB apps include FltPlan Go, ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot, Naviator, Seattle Avionics FlyQ EFB and WingX Pro7. This provides the “best of both worlds” by allowing pilots to plan their flights on their home/office desktop or laptop computers that typically have larger displays and a familiar keyboard and mouse interface. The recent features introduced in the AOPA Flight Planner provide powerful planning tools that are not available in other products. Being able to utilize these tools and then send the planned route to their EFB is very popular with AOPA members.
Predictive Weather Along Route – the latest innovation provided in the AOPA Flight Planner. We released this new and unique feature a few days before AirVenture kicked off this year. This tool allows pilots to look at TAF (terminal area forecasts) along their route in a unique, visual way. Starting with a set departure time and calculating the position of the aircraft along the route, this new tool displays a color-coded icon representing the conditions that are forecast when the aircraft is passing by each station. This allows pilots to “look into the future” and see what weather they can expect along their route and find the optimal departure time “sweet spot” based on the predicted weather conditions.
Throughout the show, we had members visit with us at the flight planning booth just to thank us and let us know that they used the new tool when planning their flights to Oshkosh. One said that he changed his original departure time by a few hours based on the predicted weather conditions that the new tool displayed. He had an enjoyable and uneventful flight to AirVenture and wanted to thank us for the timely release of the new tool!
Give it a try yourself by going to: www.aopa.org/flightplanner. A comprehensive library of tutorial videos is available on the AOPA Flight Planning Products YouTube Channel here.
