Fltplan.com introduces iPhone app

Fltplan.com, the popular online flight planning website, has offered free apps for the iPad and Android tablets for a few years now. While the app–called FltPlan Go–lags behind the big players like Garmin or ForeFlight on advanced features, it is a valuable app for flight planning and airport information. It’s also free, making it a nice backup option if nothing else.

One feature that was previously lacking was the ability to run the app on the iPhone. For many pilots who have gone fully electronic with their charts, this was a key drawback–a phone makes a fine backup for the primary tablet. But no more. The company recently released FltPlan Go for iPhone, offering almost all of the features found on the iPad, and it’s still free.

The app includes moving maps, approach plates, weather briefings, airport information, checklists and more. One of our favorite features is the NavLogs page, which offers quick access to FltPlan.com’s powerful trip planning sheets. We often plan a flight online with FltPlan.com, then sync these flight plans and NavLogs to the app. The performance profiles are usually extremely accurate, so when the NavLog says your trip will take 2:15, it most likely will. The app is an easy way to access these.

We think the layout is also cleaner than previous versions of the iPad app, with intuitive menu icons down the left side of the phone. It’s well-suited for tapping the screen in turbulence.

Note that this is actually a separate app from the iPad version, in contrast to universal apps like ForeFlight, so make sure you download the iPhone version.