Blog
My experience filing flightplans from my iPhone
My experience filing flightplans from my iPhone
On a recent business trip to Cannes with a Piper Archer II I had the opportunity to shortly visit the great island of Corsica just off the coast of France. One of the great aerodromes of the island is Proprioano, which has one paved runway, partly overgrown by grass, air-to-air communications only and which runway ends at the beach.
When we landed there we met 2 Swiss pilots sitting at the local restaurant in the shade with thick Bottlang manuals and charts preparing for their next flight out. They were camping out right at this desolated aerodrome and wandered how to file and activate their flightplan as nobody seemed to be there at the aerodrome at that time.
Sitting in the shade with one of our new Swiss friends. On the right you see the runway running from the beach.
I offered my help and suggested to file the flightplan for them using my iPhone and the AeroPlus Flightplan Filing app.
Later that day we visited the beach for a swim. The beach can be accessed by a path alongside the runway and it is amazing that they would just let you walk alongside the runway towards the beach. That is something not possible back home in Holland.
After returning back from the beach, we filed our own flightplan to Cannes and since nobody was there to activate our flightplan for us, we send ourselves the departure AFTN message from the iPhone app and took off.
Once in the air and enroute we contacted ATC area controllers at the nearby larger airport and they already had our flightplan there and informed us that it was already activated. We were all set to fly to Cannes.
During this whole trip, I used nothing else but the iPad and iPhone for flightplan filing, checking the current and forecasted aviation weather and for preparing the flight. It feels great to have all this information available at disposal on your iPhone or iPad at any location and not to be dependent anymore on local briefing rooms and writing out flightplan forms by hand.
Filing my flightplan from Propriano to Cannes using my iPhone. A Pilatus aircraft is approaching the runway.