AOPA To Retire Online Flight Planner

Noting that Jeppesen will be decommissioning the underlying map structure, AOPA announced today that its desktop flight planner will go offline at the end of April this year. “We are working diligently to provide replacement options for those who wish to utilize a desktop Flight Planning application and will communicate all details as they become available.” The flight planner, which includes aircraft and pilot profiles, and allows overlay of various weather products as well as critical flight planning, is a popular member benefit.

“For more than a decade, AOPA and Jeppesen, A Boeing Company, have worked together to provide members with a world-class desktop flight planning application,” the association said. “In the coming months, Jeppesen will be decommissioning the legacy map engine that provides critical information to this application. As a result, the current Flight Planner will no longer be supported as of March 31, 2020, and no longer accessible as of April 30, 2020. As technology evolves, the engine has become obsolete, but AOPA fully understands that many pilots remain active users of desktop flight planning. All flight plans and aircraft profiles will be retained. If you have any questions, suggestions for the new tool, or concerns, please use this link to let us know. Thank you for your patience as we move forward with this transition.”

As useful as the AOPA Flight Planner has been, the trend is clearly toward pilots creating flight plans and profiles on tablets that can then be brought to the cockpit and, in the case of the recent Garmin Pilot app update, synced with onboard navigators.