Check out our handy list of the best pilot apps you should have on your phone, iPad or tablet.
The following list is worth considering whether you are a beginner looking for resources or an experienced pilot looking for interesting and useful apps.
1) Garmin Pilot
Garmin Pilot is a comprehensive app with aviation tools to help you plan, file and fly.
Features of the Garmin Pilot application include:
- Maps: To do your flight plan over interactive maps or charts with overlays including weather, TFR, terrain, obstacles and fuel prices.
- Flight plan: To create, edit and bookmark your flight plans.
- Trip planning: To receive your official DUATS weather briefing. File, amend, close and cancel flight plans.
- Airport info: Including frequencies, runways, procedures and more.
- Charts: Charts for your flight plans are stored in binders for easy access during flight.
- WX imagery: Static weather maps including turbulence, convection, icing and more from the NOAA weather aviation center.
- Scratch Pad: To take notes during your flight.
- Traffic: Displays traffic in a ADS-B equipped aircraft when using Garmin’s portable ADS-B receiver GDL 39 3D(Premium subscription required).
- Terrain: Terrain and obstacles are displayed in proximity to your aircraft in a 360-degree view
- SynVis: Synthetic Vision is a 3D high-resolution vision including terrain, obstacles and runways data sets(Premium subscription required)
You can’t go wrong with this app, so just try free for 30 days and say bye to paper charts.
2) AeroWeather Pro
This app has been created to check the precise weather conditions (METAR) and forecasts (TAF) from airports around the world. Very useful for pilot’s flight preparation and also to just get very precise weather.
It also integrates airport NOTAMs webcam images around airports, US ATC delay information and FlightServices access. And it comes with an Apple Watch App, which shows either a list of stations as defined in the Apple Watch group or all nearby stations based on your current location.
You can use AeroWeather free version first and then decide if you’d like to upgrade to AeroWeather Pro.
3) LiveATC Air Radio
To listen to live air traffic control over the world in real-time.
You can tune in and listen to a lot of ATC frequencies: Clearance Delivery, Ground, Tower, Departure and Approach.
A very useful tool for student pilots or aviation enthusiasts to familiarize themselves with communications!
LiveATC also keeps recordings of interesting ATC communications. There are tail strikes, bird strikes, hail storms and more. Super interesting!
If you are just starting out or you struggle with ATC communications this is a very useful app, it can be hard at the beginning because it’s like learning a new language. Plus you need to fly, navigate and talk at the same time. But keep practicing and you’ll get the picture pretty fast.
4) Windy.com
It’s not specially designed for pilots but it includes great visualizations of wind conditions.
The best weather app out there.
It brings you all the forecasting models: global ECMWF and GFS, plus local NEMS, AROME, and ICON (Europe) and NAM (US)
It provides images from satellites all over the World with great resolution and for any location, you can display: basic forecast (temperature, rain and snow accumulation, wind speed, wind gusts, and wind direction), Wind comparison, Meteogram (temperature and dew point, wind speed and wind gusts, pressure, precipitation, altitude, cloud cover, cloud base), Airgram (wind barbs, temperature and cloud cover at different altitudes) and Waves forecast.
5) My E6B/Sporty’s E6B
It’s an aviation calculator.
There are functions to help you with calculations for groundspeed, fuel required, inflight calculations, weather-related functions (crosswind, pressure and density altitudes), and weight and balance feature, which allows you to store data from multiple planes and then edit the various weights and arms for quick calculations.
Useful conversions: Celsius-Fahrenheit, Nautical Miles-Kilometers, Feet-meters, Pounds-Kilograms, Avga Gallons-Pounds, etc.
It shows zulu, local and home time zones.
It’s a great tool for pilots of all levels.
6) Flightradar24 (Europe) / Plane Finder (US)
With this tracking system, you can see any commercial flight anywhere in the world.
You’ll be able to locate an aircraft, follow their movements, and get other info like type of aircraft, plate, squawk code, airline, origin, destination, estimated time of arrival, speed, altitude, vertical speed and much more.
It shows real-time commercial aircraft information in a map, so you can zoom in on any airport and check all the planes that are taxiing, cruisings or departing.
If you zoom out, you’ll see all the traffic over that area.
It’s quite fascinating to see the concentration of air traffic in some areas.
We usually use it when waiting for an aircraft to come, to see if the aircraft is on the way or still on ground.
Download Flightradar for Android | iOS
Download Plane Finder for Android | iOS
7) Mobile Flitedeck
It has all the navigational charts, manuals, and documents needed for your paperless flight.
The digital charts have been approved by the FAA to substitute the navigation charts and because it’s a Jeppesen product you know all the maps are detailed, accurate and focused on quality.
Very easy to use, it was designed by pilots for pilots.
It is a complete solution; quality charting and data, tested user experience, training, support and services designed to help you be completely mobile.
Download for iOS
8) Goodreader
Extremely useful as a single place to hold all sorts of documents, from downloaded copies of aviation magazines, aviation club journals, EASA/CAA reference documents, Aircraft manuals, your airline guidelines, FAA duty, and rest requirements…
You can even save web pages for offline reading, edit, add notes, read, sign and share large PDF files from anywhere.
Use it to work, study or to manage all your books and videos.
You’ll always have your important documents with you organized.
One of the best reading and productivity app.
Download for iOS
9) Cloudahoy
It’s an app for post-flight debriefing.
Once you download CloudAhoy and you ascend above the clouds, the app starts capturing in-flight data, which it combines with data gathered from other sources, then, the moment you land, the whole data package is sent to CloudAhoy’s server for thorough analyzation, waiting for you in a debriefing-ready form that you can share with fellow pilots and on any social media platform.
10) Stafftraveler
StaffTraveler is an app that enables airline employees to check the seat availability on the flights they wish to non-rev to.
If you need loads for any airline around the world you just post a request and within minutes you have an answer.
Each request takes one credit, but when you answer another person’s request you gain a credit. So you don’t need to spend money, it’s all free.
Very useful for those commuting or traveling on ZED tickets on foreign airlines.
You will never get stranded at an airport for days again with this app.
Seriously, it’s super helpful. If you ever travel using standby tickets you need this app. Once you try it you can’t live without it anymore.
11) Logten Pro
Leading international pilot logbook app.
From private pilots to airline pilots, whether you have 200 or 20,000 hours Logten Pro is exactly what you need. You can keep records of the flight times, flight conditions, passengers, approaches…; filter however you want and track anything about your flying, and import your flight schedule easily.
The analyze view you’ll get a detailed analysis of your flight time divided into categories such as Multi-engine, Pilot in Command, Turbine…and shows the most commonly requested data at your fingertips.
There’s also a new map visualization feature to view all your logged flights showing the airport locations and flight paths you selected.
The most advanced pilot logbook.
Download for iOS
12) RosterBuster
One of the most popular apps used by airline pilots.
Share your monthly flight schedule, connect with other flight crew and match days off or track your block duty hours viewing your flight statistics.
With RosterBuster you’ll also get 3D airport views, personalized career statistics (block hours, Flight Time Limit rules), gate info, all your roster details offline, layover and meet-up suggestions, in-app chat with anybody in the community without exchanging phones, logbook export and more.
