PilotEdge Forums

Hi,
So this weekend I had a mishap with Foreflight and a tech route that ended up not being accurate.

I was attempting to go from John Wayne to Santa Barbara and the guidance on Foreflight was from SLI to some random waypoint towards ELMOO that doesn't even show up on SkyVector, rather than SLI, V23, LAX. (I don't have ForeFlight in front of me to tell you the exact techroute ID)

Has anyone else run in to this issue with Foreflight? It's now to the point where I don't trust the recommended routes coming out of Foreflight.

Of course it happened when Keith is controlling so I felt extra ridiculous. lol I ended up just bailing and trying to figure it out offline rather than cause myself further embarrassment.

Also, has anyone else noticed that with the new version of Foreflight that syncs up with X-Plane that the tracking is off by quite a bit? If I stick right on a centered VOR needle, it will be off the tracking line in Foreflight.

Thoughts?

I had something similar but less serious this weekend. When filing for the TEC route for KSNA to KSBD, ForeFlight showed it with an altitude of 6000. However the controller corrected the filing indicating it should be 5000 for piston aircraft. The problem I see with foreflight's tec routes is that it doesn't give all the information that you would get in the AF/D.

I've also seen cases where ForeFlight isn't exactly lined up with x-plane (particularly for small airports), but I attribute that to x-plane, since ForeFlight has never been off for me in the real world. The airport I fly out of, KEDU has one runway (17/35) but x-plane shows it as 16/34.

I concur, just tested FF and if you enter a city pair, it gives you a list of TEC routes with no further guidance as to which one applies. Your best bet is to copy the clearance as issued by atc and then enter it into FF, ie. ksna cstn21 ksba.

I did see the cstn6 on the cleared route list, not sure why. Scroll down further to the Tec route list and the list is more reasonable.

The feature is good for entering the route quickly after receiving clnc, but not for working the route ahead of time as it currently stands

Thanks for the notes on this!

So Keith, in this case should I hold off filing an IFR flight plan and instead ask for IFR clearance to airport XYZ and get the route, at which point the controller will enter in the flight plan?

I was trying to pre-submit my flight plans to save the controller work, which is why I had the process I did.

Brett

If you'd like to file an accurate flight plan ahead of time, you could use the FAA route database, the AFD or myflightroute (the latter being the most convenient). Then, once you receive the clearance, you can load that into foreflight easily by browsing the available TEC route codes and chosing the right one based on the clearance, rather than a guess.