Better than foreflight, but has serious flaws

Having been recently forced to use and purchase foreflight by a flight school. I have to bump my rating of Garmin Pilot up a star.

This is a very hard review to write because in many ways I love this app, but in other ways it falls flat on its face, especially in the phone version. The more I use the app the lower my rating of it gets. Unfortunately the iPhone app is basically a crippled version of the iPad app despite the fact that now the 6+ is available and the current iPhones are more powerful than most iPads on the market. There are even some flaws in the iPhone app that the developers dont know about until you point them out. Its like they honestly dont understand how badly theyve hindered users who dont want to fly with a big bulky iPad. Having said all that, foreflight on an iPhone is just utter crap. Its a map and a line. If garmin pilot could have split screen synvis for the iPad (at minimum, for the love of god fix the iPhone app!!!) I think it would be far superior to both versions of foreflight. No, Im not being picky about gadgetry, I just think it lays out the information you want very clearly as opposed to the navigation split screen. Also some ability to customer the navigation instruments would be nice.

Honestly though one of the biggest issues is the price. Not all pilots are rich, in fact some of us are pilots and can barely afford to fly as it is. And making things like safe taxi and terrain alerts a paid option is borderline criminal IMHO. Why not make the decision between foreflight and pilot even easier by making Garmin Pilot affordable?! Its not like the company needs the revenue from this app that badly.

Despite my complaints, and the obscene price for the useful premium subscriptions, Pilot is an amazing safety tool albeit I think with its limitations it aids IFR flyers far more than VFR pilots. Many of the features and menus are incredibly cumbersome to use and are not very intuitive at all.

Garmin needs a major design of this app or to just make simple things like having dual screens up on the iPhone just like the iPad so you can see a map and CDI at the same time! They also need to make sure that a paid service containing charts has all of the information found on paper charts, which it currently does NOT and can leave you in a very bad position. Until this app can actually replace paper charts entirely I dont think its worth the money they charge to use it.

Wastintime about Garmin Pilot, v8.1