A Pilot's Biggest Fear

Downloads of 8Flight were up nearly 600% this week on the news that that other app is being sold to a private equity firm.

In the last 18 months, I think it’s pretty safe to say we’ve built more than any other EFB has in nearly that many years, but there’s still plenty to be done.

There’s something new every week, and sometimes almost every day. If there’s something that’s not there yet (or something new that launches without a particular feature), you can bet it will be soon.

A few big things that are on deck for the next few weeks though:

ADS-B Traffic & Weather

• In a couple weeks we’ll have support for Stratux, Stratus 3, non-Garmin avionics, and anything else that uses GDL90 over WiFi.
• (Have Garmin avionics? Let them know you’d like them to work with 8Flight.)
• We’ll also support Bad Elf and Dual bluetooth GPS devices.
• Synthetic vision will follow a few weeks later.

Logbook

• In 2015 that other app offered me an internship to build their logbook feature, but I turned it down after being underwhelmed by their plans.
• So 8Flight will have a much better logbook, and soon.

Flight Planning Improvements

• POH-based performance (send us your POH if you have one that’s not a Bonanza/Cirrus/TBM/PC-12/Lear 31/F-16)
• Weight & Balance
• NOTAMs built for 2025
• Import routes and KML overlays, as well as documents
• Even more weather (Skew-T anyone?)
• All sorts of little things like setting a default aircraft, etc.

And after all those bases are covered, we get back to the really unique parts of the roadmap — I can’t wait to show you.

Just this week we added some performance improvements that make our realtime radar now load instantly and use as much as 60% less RAM. And we’re finishing up work on V2 of our data engine to process even better best-in-class FBO data with more updates from more sources along with maintenance facilities, customs info, and more.

Oh, and try the Mac app if you haven’t yet. Flight planning on a big screen is just downright awesome when it looks this good.

But we couldn’t do any of this without customers — your continued support really does mean the world. And keep all the feedback coming too, we love it.

Matt