We’re on the ground at AOPA Summit in Tampa and wanted to spread the word about the ForeFlight Meetup later today. Visit us in Booth 1045 or watch the live video online.

Friday, November 6th 1:30pm EST – ForeFlight Meetup 2:30pm EST – AOPA Airports for iPhone

Meet the ForeFlight team, exchange ideas, and learn tips and tricks about the apps.

Even if you’re not at AOPA Summit, we still want you to participate! Watch the live streaming video online at our web site starting at 1:30pm EST.

Please submit a question beforehand by email to team@foreflight.com or Twitter @ForeFlight.

Here at ForeFlight, we love iPhones.  We were in the App Store on Day 1 and have been building iPhone apps for pilots ever since.  But not every pilot has an iPhone, so we wanted to spread out to a new set of phones and a new community of pilots.  Today we’re proud to announce that ForeFlight has landed on Android.

ForeFlight Weather 1.0 is a new app available exclusively on Google’s Android platform.  ForeFlight Weather offers smooth and efficient access to raw METARs and TAFs, translations, and winds aloft.  Search by airport identifier and view weather information for thousands of airports.  Just like in our iPhone apps, you can add “Favorites” for your frequent airports or view “Recents” to see your last searched airports.  We’ve also included our signature color coded indicators for current flight rules.  Just one quick glance to see current weather around the world!

Weather 1.0 is pixel perfect, exceptionally intuitive, and carefully crafted for the pilot workflow – just like our iPhones apps.  ForeFlight Weather uses standard Android navigation and searching, so pilots with Android phones will feel right at home.  For the user interface, we combined the best parts of Android with newly crafted elements that carry over the familiar and functional ForeFlight look-and-feel.  Weather 1.0 lives up to the ForeFlight name, and sets the new standard in Android aviation.

ForeFlight Weather 1.0 is available in the Android Market for $19.99.  Upcoming features include radar and satellite imagery. Android phones like the G1 and myTouch 3g are currently available in the United States from T-Mobile, with Verizon and Sprint coming on board soon.

The Finer Points of Flying (TFP) and ForeFlight are excited to announce the launch of VFR Communications, a new flight training iPhone and iPod touch app for pilots. The new app, designed and developed by ForeFlight, is available for download today on the iTunes App Store. VFR Communications is the first app to provide pilots access to full-length educational video content on an iPhone or iPod touch.

This five‐chapter instructional course contains an hour of  video filmed entirely in 1080i High Definition, computer animation, and charismatic instruction from Jason Miller, recently nominated FAA flight instructor of the year. Each video provides in‐depth coverage of airspace dimensions, charting, airspace entry requirements, and real‐world cockpit footage that demonstrates how a proficient pilot communicates efficiently and effectively in complex airspace. This instructional course is perfect for  student pilots that desire a learning tool that goes beyond the content normally presented in a standard instructional flight lesson, for private pilots brushing up before a biennial flight review or check‐out, or for enthusiasts wanting to learn how pilots really communicate when navigating simple and complex airspace.

VFR Communications is available for purchase today for $19.99 on the iTunes App Store. A DVD version of the course and a preview is available online at TheFinerPoints.net.

If you haven’t yet discovered Jason Miller, run – don’t walk – over to TheFinerPoints.net and walk through his collection of audio and video training sessions. If you like what you see, support his efforts through the purchase of his new app or a DVD. He is a fresh, talented, charismatic, and hard working educator that brings something magical and unique to flight training.

About The Finer Points of Flying

The Finer Points of Flying produces mobile media programs hosted by accomplished flight instructor and professional musician, Jason Miller. The Finer Points blends straight‐forward fundamentals of flight instruction with the charm and levity injected by on‐point storytelling and music. The series has won critical acclaim from viewers and many of the nation’s aviation luminaries alike for its use of captivating video, motion graphics, and computer animation to convey concepts from a wide and varied range of aeronautical subjects in an enjoyable and easily comprehended way.

When we first started developing software for the iPhone, we had no idea just how many people would find what we built useful and valuable.  Over the past year, we have founds ourselves amazed at the ways the iPhone and mobile aviation software has helped improve situational awareness and safety. Every day we get encouraging and supportive emails from customers around the world: from helicopter pilots carrying rig workers to platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, to Red Bull air racers checking weather before a lap around the pylons. An email we received last night from a surgeon was most unexpected.

The email we received was perhaps the most heartwarming, tear-jerking, and unexpected emails from an unexpected customer.  The first paragraph read:

I am sure that every day someone uses your software and its makes their
flight safer.  Indirectly, it helps saves lives.  Yesterday your
software directly saved a life.  I want to thank you for this.

Dr. Ira Kirschenbaum, the Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in Bronx, NY, downloaded the free version of ForeFlight Checklist and modified the standard templates for three major surgical procedures: total hip replacement, total knee replacement, and arthroscopy of the knee.  In preparation for a recent surgical procedure, Dr. Kirschenbaum ticked off each of the steps in his pre-op checklist – except one:

When I got to one of the checks looking at a particular laboratory
I checked the lab result and noted it to be outside of parameters for
what would be considered normal.  It did not receive my check on
ForeFlight Checklist.  I called over the anesthesiologist and brought
this up to his attention.  This led us to look deeply into the chart and
we noted an undiagnosed liver problem that would have placed the patient
at high risk for this surgical procedure.  All this done before the
‘flight’ started.  A life was saved.

As software developers, this is both humbling and inspirational.  The iPhone is truly an evolution that is changing the way people work, interact, and interface with software.  We are grateful and excited to be a part of the change.

Last night we launched VFR sectional chart coverage for Alaska for our pilot friends up north. Alaska coverage presented unique challenges: the whole area is about 50% of the size of the contiguous US (thus a lot of disk space and additional processing required), and the mercator projection has interesting effects on geographical areas far from the equator (i.e. Alaska).

No update to ForeFlight charts is required.  Enter ANC (Anchorage) in the search bar to see an example.

The ForeFlight team has worked with Spreadshirt to offer ForeFlight apparel for sale online.

If you’re interested in getting a great looking shirt or hat check out the new online store!

Earlier this week we enabled a new feature: automatic DUATS weather briefings via email. Simply file a plan using ForeFlight Mobile or ForeFlight File, include your email address on the flight planning form, and seconds later an elegantly styled briefing appears in your email inbox.

Refer to the briefing later, forward it to a friend, or keep it around for your records!

We’re proud to announce ForeFlight Mobile v2.4, now available in the iPhone App Store.  This is the latest update to our flagship app, and it’s a big one!

• Newly designed METAR view that makes viewing encoded, decoded, and nearby METARs easier; METARs are now viewable when offline.
• Newly designed TAF view that elegantly organizes translations and highlights the current forecast period.  TAFs are now viewable when offline.
• Newly designed Winds Aloft view that elegantly organizes wind and temperature data and highlights the current forecast.  Winds Aloft are now viewable when offline.
• New personal preference settings that lets you select units for wind speed, temperature, pressure, and visibility.  Great for international customers or customers that prefer viewing temperature in Fahrenheit.
• New personal preference setting to hide old TAF translations.
• New feature that saves the last airport displayed and reloads that airport the next time you restart ForeFlight.
• Weather for your recently viewed and favorite airports is downloaded and stored on device automatically.
• New trip estimator that accepts airport identifiers, ground speed, and fuel burn and computes ETE, burn, total distance, leg distance, leg ETE, and leg fuel burn; displays leg and trip details in a flight log view that includes current flight rules for each stop.
• Enhanced search interface that accepts airport identifiers, ground speed, and fuel burn and estimates trip details.
• New routes view that provides access to previously estimated trips when offline.
• Updated recents and favorites views to show the current altimeter setting and temperature/dewpoint for each airport, when available.
• New TFR imagery collection in the Images catalog
• New “help bubbles” that show how to use the Search view
• DUATS account settings (optional) – use your own DUATS account for filing flight plans
• Greatly improved performance
• Many bug fixes, including a common flight plan filing form crash bug

Already a user?  Like all v2.x releases, this is a free update.  Learn how to update the app on your iPhone.

Ready to come on board?  ForeFlight Mobile v2.4 is available in the iPhone App Store for $74.99.

We couldn’t be more proud of ForeFlight Mobile!  It took months of development and testing to get every detail right, but we’re confident our users will enjoy the new standard in Preflight Intelligence™.

To bring you the highest quality sectional images in ForeFlight Charts, we proudly partnered with RunwayFinder.com. RunwayFinder is a popular web site for viewing seamless sectional and terminal charts.

“As a pilot, I’ve always been a big fan of RunwayFinder” said ForeFlight co-founder Jason Miller. “I couldn’t be more excited to partner with them and bring two of the leading names in aviation innovation together.”

“It’s been great collaborating with ForeFlight” said RunwayFinder founder Dave Parsons. “ForeFlight is the leader in aviation apps on the iPhone, and the new Charts app is hands-down the best way to explore sectional and terminal charts on the iPhone.”

With RunwayFinder at our side, you can be assured that you’re always viewing the most up-to-date sectionals and terminal charts in ForeFlight Charts.

We’re proud to announce our newest iPhone app: ForeFlight Charts 1.0! ForeFlight Charts makes exploring FAA VFR Sectional Charts and planning simple routes of flight a breeze! Effortlessly zoom through the airspace along a route of flight, compute the estimated time en-route and fuel burn, or calculate total trip distance.

• Pinch, drag, and zoom FAA Sectional Charts in the continental United States, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
• Zoom into major airports to see FAA Terminal Charts.
• Draw a route of flight using two or more airport identifiers, ground speed, and fuel burn.
• Airport elevation and tower/CTAF frequencies displayed within airport markers.
• ‘Follow Me’ functionality that uses the iPhone’s location support to enable moving map functionality.
• Display ground speed, true course, and altitude when in Follow Me mode.
• Rotation support for browsing charts and routes in landscape mode.
• Default settings for ground speed and fuel burn.

Give your Preflight Intelligence™ toolbox a boost and download Charts 1.0 today!  ForeFlight Charts v1.0 is available in the iPhone App Store for $9.99/year (USD).