Garmin acquires fltplan.com

by philg

This ties into some recent posts…. Garmin acquires fltplan.com.

The fltplan.com site is one of the best tools for determining likely fuel consumption on a trip, especially with turbine-powered aircraft.

fltplan.com also has a paid service for ameliorating some of the horrors imposed on citizens by the U.S. immigration bureaucracy (see “Can we trust Customs and Border Protection to screen refugees and asylum cases given what they’ve done with their eAPIS web site?“). Maybe this will get rolled into Garmin Pilot and turn into yet another choice on the home screen? (see “Is it possible to build an app whose job is to use another app?”)

One thing that neither fltplan.com, Garmin Pilot, nor ForeFlight do is figure out if it makes sense to fly different segments of a trip at different altitudes. For example, sometimes we are able to do a lot better leaving windy New England if we stay around 10,000’ until New Jersey (avoiding a 100-knot headwind) and then climb to the flight levels starting in the comparatively peaceful Mid-Atlantic. This can make it possible to go nonstop to Georgia rather than stopping for fuel.

The current tools all bake in an assumption that a flight will (a) depart and climb, (b) stay up at a cruise altitude for nearly the entire trip, and (c) descend and land. If they get more sophisticated it is to add “step climbing” for jets that aren’t able to zoom all the way up to FL410 until they’ve burned off some weight at lower altitudes. This is an entirely separate issue from whether it makes sense to fly lower or higher on some segments because of headwinds.

Maybe Garmin can add this feature now! It shouldn’t be that hard. Just try 6 different altitudes on each of 4 major trip segments (1296 total calculations) and if any of the fuel burn or time results are better than a straightforward climb-cruise-descend profile, work the problem in more detail.

 

5 thoughts on “Garmin acquires fltplan.com”

  1. I think most planes that fly all the way up to FL410 have a team of professional dispatchers that figure out this stuff. Garmin Pilot seems like it is aimed at piston powered planes.

  2. I think that one reason for the acquisition is to move upmarket into the turbine world (a friend who runs a charter operation says that, due to the costs of regulatory compliance, the smallest GA plane in 2028 will be a Gulfstream). fltplan.com is popular for planning bizjet flights.

    My experience with dispatchers is overwhelmingly positive, but I haven’t seen them use software that can do the analysis I mention in the original post (and, though simple to do via computer, it would not be easy to do manually).

  3. The weather bulletins are in a standard format and come in a feed. The topographical data must be available from the USGS. I assume the formulas for calculating fuel consumption are non-proprietary.

    An algorithm to minimize fuel consumption, avoid bad weather, or otherwise suit the pilot’s preferences could run through the calculations and choose the optimum solution, I would think.

    Somewhat off-topic: when flying for hours in a small plane, especially with persons small, how does one deal with unscheduled calls of nature?

  4. As you conjecture, the weather data are public and readily obtainable. Aircraft performance data, though, are a pain to gather and somehow fltplan.com has created great models for most turbine-powered aircraft.

    Calls of nature? One approach is to fly 2-hour legs. A better one is to upgrade to an Embraer Phenom 300 and its externally serviced lav! See https://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/travel-john-pack-of-three.html for an example of an in-flight solution for a $20,000 plane.

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