ForeFlight Offers Trip Assistant

The maker of one of the most successful aviation app producers, ForeFlight, has an added feature called Trip Assistant. The new resource adds a whole new layer of support, making general aviation journeys more predictable.

ForeFlight’s founder and CEO Tyson Weihs says the feature was developed to help ForeFlight’s employees who needed to know how long a trip would take or when to leave their homes to get to a meeting on time. “Trip Assistant is a tool that any aircraft user – assistants, flight support staff, passengers and pilots – can use to quickly compute total trip time, even when fuel stops are required,” Weihs said.

Trip Assistant is easy to use. You simply enter business names, street addresses or names of places as the departure and destination points and the system suggests airports near the departure and destination as well as driving directions. Setting a departure time will make the system calculate an estimated arrival time and setting an arrival time will produce a departure time required to get to the destination on time.

Trip Assistant also recommends fuel stops on the way, if necessary. Criteria such as fuel prices, performance parameters and leg times are used to calculate the best options for landings enroute. Airports with insufficient runways for the performance of the aircraft are not shown. You can also filter out airports based on several other parameters, such as availability of desired instrument approach types, the existence of a control tower and more.

Trip Assistant is free with a subscription to either ForeFlight’s Performance Plus or Business Performance Plus services.