How many of you remember the flight planning website called RunwayFinder? RF was put out of action earlier this year by a rather sweeping lawsuit from lawyer Roger Stenbock in what sounds like a potentially devastating attack on many popular GA flight planning websites. RF is out of action for now, they went offline a few weeks ago and may be ruined. In addition, it is likely that FlightPrep will go after several other GA flight planning websites over the next year or two and there is a good chance it is one you use and enjoy. FlightPrep is aggressive and they want more control of GA flight planning.
I have a number of flight hours using, or should I say putting up with FlightPrep Pro ChartBook EFB. At $2500 it was not a cheap EFB and frankly I thought it was just a work in progress. It was prone to freezing anywhere anytime, it had limited battery life, hook-up was a tangle of wires, it had numerous operational glitches and customer service at FlightPrep was pretty much unable to help. I strongly disliked their machine and my company strongly considered returning its entire collection of FlightPrep EFBs.
To be fair, general aviation EFBs have been experiencing teething pains as a nascent technology and most of the problem is the high resolution graphics they employ. It takes a lot of computing power to render multiple nav charts, moving map, and real-time weather products into a small laptop computer and modern ipads, tablets, and notebooks are largely unable to do it. That's not really FlightPrep's problem perhaps but they are going to have to deal with it if they want to sell EFBs with their software installed. So far they haven't succeeded in solving the fundamental operational issues with these devices, and the FlightPrep software itself has serious issues as well. I do not feel that GA EFBs are ready for prime time at this point and worse yet they tend to act as a distraction.
On the other hand, RunwayFinder was a free flight planning software that I used frequently in connection with my job and liked very much. It was a good website, it was free, and it was the most useful way to package NACO charts. It was like DUATS on steriods integrating all the VFR and IFR charts into a smooth interface that was easy to use and made a big improvement in how well I planned my flights. It was great for GA pilots who need all the help they can get planning challenging, low altitude, risky GA flights. I hope they get out of their attack from Stenbock's FlightPrep, and only time will tell.
AvWeb articles on FlightPrep Lawsuit