Any recent Garmin Pilot experiences?

[digits_]

Hi all,

with the recent mass foreflight layoffs, the accompanied price hike and the ipad only mindset, I'm contemplating switching over from the foreflight system to garmin pilot on android.

I can find lots of older reviews, 5+ years old where the consensus was 'it works, but isn't great'. Does anyone here have any updated experiences?

What I'd like to use it for:
- VFR and IFR flying below 18 000 ft
- filing flight plans in Canada & US
- one of the planes I fly has a flightstream installed. would be nice if Garmin pilot on android would work with that as well.

Any thoughts or recent experiences?

[khedrei]

Hi all,

with the recent mass foreflight layoffs, the accompanied price hike and the ipad only mindset, I'm contemplating switching over from the foreflight system to garmin pilot on android.

I can find lots of older reviews, 5+ years old where the consensus was 'it works, but isn't great'. Does anyone here have any updated experiences?

What I'd like to use it for:
- VFR and IFR flying below 18 000 ft
- filing flight plans in Canada & US
- one of the planes I fly has a flightstream installed. would be nice if Garmin pilot on android would work with that as well.

Any thoughts or recent experiences?

Ill be give you the TLDR first. Garmin pilot is currently the best its ever been with the least amount of bugs in its history. It will likely do everything you need and more and work just fine for the 1 year commitment when you can then decide if it was worth the switch.

More details:

I've been using it consistently for almost 10 years on my personal plane as I have a full garmin panel and despise Apple junk.

Issues I've ran into have most had to do with filing flight plans and using it with the flightstream 510 to load Databases on my 750, 650, 500txi. The flight plan filing issues were by far the most annoying and disruptive especially when i was on a deadline to leave. I have opened numerous tickets with Garmin and for years they never really found out why I had intermittent issues filing. I got various types of error msgs filing IFR flight plans. It seemed completely random. Wifi, cell network, location, in Canada, the US. Didn't matter. Sometimes it would work in the any of the above, others it wouldnt. Many times I had to call it in. That being said, i haven't had issues since last Sept. They told me on one of the tickets that there was a new version coming that should solve those problems. I have only filed a couple handfuls of flight plans since, so far so good.

Another big issue I found in the US with VFR flight plans was that I would file (when it worked) then close it out on arrival. The App would say it was closed, and 30 minutes later I get a call from Liedos saying im overdue. This happened twice and after that I called to ensure it was closed. I told Garmin. I dont know if it was fixed. Haven't done it since. Im not even sure it can be done in Canada.

Loading databases generally works every time now. I think some of those issues were related to the software on my panel mounted avionics more than Pilot, but I cant say for sure. Haven't had many issues in this department for at least a couple years. Maybe one cycle i had to do with the SD cards. Generally fine and super fast.

Loading flight plans from your phone is super easy via flight stream but I actually dont do it very often because I find that I never have that many waypoints so punching them into the GTN is easy enough.

I had a wx issue where I couldnt access canadian wx. Called Garmin. Fix to download popped up next day.

Another issue where I couldnt access Canadian GFAs. This one too longer for them to fix... couple weeks maybe. Annoying but they did it.

The layout and functions are all just as capable as FF and all the info you need for wx, notams, airspace CFS, etc are all there. You will just have to get used to where to find it. This is all going to be personal preference. A couple hours of playing around and you'll get used to it. I do think that Foreflight is a superior product and wish it was available for Android. But Garmin tech support is awesome to talk to and they seem to really care about solving the problems and making it better. I have had a few extentions and freebies handed out because of the issues.

Hold times used to be 45-60 minutes. Gone down significantly. Waited just a couple minutes last time. I was also disconnected a couple times after waiting 45 minutes on hold. Wouldn't you know, they called me back even though they didnt have my name and I hadn't talked to anyone yet.

Bottom line, I think its worth a shot if I were you. I think most of the issues are worked out now. And bonus to not have to use Apple trash.

[‘Bob’]

“It’s worse in almost every possible way but at least it’s not junk!”

[CpnCrunch]

“It’s worse in almost every possible way but at least it’s not junk!”

Yeah, that's why I used foreflight when I was flying IFR. You just tell it the general route, it shows you the most common previously cleared ATC routes. You choose one, click file, click another button to put it through flightstream into your avionics, and you're ready to go as long as you've given the ACC 10 or 15 mins to get your submitted flight plan into their system.

Compare to FltPlan Go which is just ridiculous and tedious when you want to enter and file a flight plan. Now that I just fly VFR I basically just run Fltplan Go on my phone and look out the window, but for actual IFR nothing beats Foreflight.

[digits_]

Thank you for the detailed review!

How does Garmin pilot deal with ifr routes?

What tablet are you using to run it on?

[khedrei]

There's Bob again offering incredible wisdom and knowledge as usual. Cant answer direct questions but is always able to throw mud around.

Garmin Pilot gives IFR routes basically the same was as FF. I think it accesses the same pool of data. On the flight planning form, once you have an origin and destination, you click on the ATC routing button and it brings up pref routes as well as commonly filed routes, how recently they were filed and how many times over the last year or whatever, the aircraft type that filed it and altitudes. Ill see if I can post a screenshot.

I use it on my Galaxy S23 phone. Also on my company iPad. I've used it on mini 5 and on an air 4 I think. The filing issues were present on both the iPad and android phone. I think I had an S9 in like 2021 and it was the same. Regardless, thats why I think it was a Garmin issue not a device issue. That being said, I havent had issues since last Sept. I normally file everything from my phone because its faster and easier than pulling out an iPad. Dont have to tether, etc.

[khedrei]

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[digits_]

Many thanks!

[khedrei]

Just did another series of trips and figured i would post a follow up.

4 IFR flight plans filed including 2 cross borders, no issues.

1 VFR filed, activated and closed (in the US) all through the app with no issues.

All from a Samsung galaxy S23.

So far so good lately.