Which Flying App Should I Use?
Skydemon, Air Nav Pro, Garmin Pilot or Foreflight? Which is best for VFR flying in South Africa?
TL;DR: I have been using various EFB (Electronic Flight Bag) applications for several years. In this post, I compare Skydemon, Air Nav Pro, Garmin Pilot, and Foreflight, and ultimately conclude that Skydemon is the best EFB for VFR flying in South Africa. I discuss the pros and cons of each app, and provide detailed information about my own experiences using them. I also discuss the challenges of integrating Garmin avionics with non-Garmin EFBs.
One of the best things you can do to improve your situational awareness in general aviation is to use an "Electronic Flight Bag" (EFB) application like Foreflight, Garmin Pilot, Air Nav Pro or Skydemon.
I started using Air Navigation Pro from the latter part of my student pilot days in 2019. The ability to see yourself on the moving map, vertical airspace info, terrain awareness, integrated weather, NOTAMs and charts makes it a no brainer to have as a critical component to every flight. To fit the purpose I purchased an iPad Mini 5 which lives in my flight bag and fits nicely into a yoke mount or knee pad.
Every year as the annual subscription comes up for renewal I look around to check if there is anything else I should consider and for the first few years I was committed to Air Nav Pro. It was actually recommended to me by a commercial pilot and definitely one of its strengths is the amount of small airfields in its database for South Africa. A critical safety factor if ever you need to divert.
Feeling adventurous in mid 2021 as my Air Nav Pro came up for renewal again I decided to try out Foreflight. It is a favorite in the USA and it certainly looks slick with lots of integration capabilities. Its VFR and IFR and has a very clean interface that's easy to like. However its downfall is that it doesn't have many of the local airports and as I've pointed out that's not something I am willing to compromise on. At the time I did some Googling and I found some local enthusiasts that have created a file where you can import data, but it was clunky and incomplete. It is just not the same nor as authentic as content being moderated and included by the OEM.
Spending a bit of time on my favorite avcom.co.za I found a number of articles where people discuss EFBs for South Africa and Skydemon was often referenced. I started a trial and at first I found the interface confusing, especially having been used to Air Nav Pro. I decided to persevere a bit more given some rave reviews and connected it to my X-Plane and Microsoft flight simulator to better test it out. After finding my way around two things really stuck with me and convinced me to make the switch:
Flight planning and briefing
Clarity of the map and how things are depicted
To elaborate on flight planning: You set your home airfield which makes starting a flight plan super easy, enter your destination and select your alternate. Then on the map you can add waypoints along the way and also set you planned altitude. You also set your aircraft profile, fuel, %HP cruise, etc. So far its not that different, but what comes next changed the game: You click "Create Briefing Pack" (click to see a short video) and it creates a PDF with mini maps along your route (enroute chart), weather, NOTAMs, Virtual Radar and airfield information which is ready to print. Print that and you have a full offline briefing pack. Gone are the days of having to plot manually on an aeronautical chart saving hours of flight planning! After a flight Skydemon provides a nice flight summary that you can email, share to social media as well as a GPX file that can be used to plot or make great aviation videos.
While I was using Air Nav Pro, I used to still take the old aeronautical charts with me. Once on a solo cross country I took Air Nav Pro, and my physical maps, and my iPad overheated in the cabin and shut down mid flight. That solidified my reasoning for always taking a backup, as I've been taught.
So since mid 2021, Skydemon became my EFB of choice and I logged dozens of flights. One becomes proficient knowing where to go for info in the air and if it works so well, then why change? Well, I purchased an aircraft in 2022 and I had an existing panel mounted portable Aera660 GPS which I used as a backup, but I would primarily navigate using Skydemon. I used an external Stratux GPS and ADSB receiver since 2021 that I purchased off Amazon which connects via Wi-Fi to increase the accuracy and receive ADSB traffic (although still in its infancy in adoption in South Africa for GA). It also worked fine on Air Nav Pro.
Well, along comes my recent aircraft avionics upgrade and Garmin. The primary reason for my avionics upgrade was a faulty transponder - in fact JHB Info called me up twice in JHB Special rules to say that I’m incorrectly transmitting 14 000 ft (even though I was at 7 500ft for sure) and although I appreciate the compliment it freaked out ATC (and me too to be honest). So I upgraded to a Garmin GNX375 which is a GPS Navigator and ADSB transmitter / receiver. I added 2 x Garmin G5s and a new Trig radio and I now have a very capable stack which is IFR capable (See CAA regulation 2011, Part 91.04.5), only for a pitot Heat that I'm missing (to follow in time). The avionics upgrade blog and video will follow soon as well.
A view of the upgraded panel on ZS-DED
Having this Garmin stack is impressive, perhaps even beautiful, when coming from the steam stack. As an avid technology user I thought “how lovely to plan on Skydemon and send my flight plan over Bluetooth to the GNX375” which was now also coupled with my Stec auto pilot. Garmin interconnects its products using a protocol they call Connext and it can send traffic, AHRS and MapMX (a protocol for heading, flight plan etc) to compatible devices. I also recently purchased the Garmin D2 Air X10 smart watch with some nifty pilot features and I had delusions of grandeur where everything will just work together.
Well. NOT SO FAST. It turns out that Garmin basically runs a near closed ecosystem and the only EFBs I found that can communicate to the stack wirelessly is Garmin's own Garmin Pilot, Foreflight and FltPlan Go. Having already ruled out Foreflight I used a 3 month Garmin Pilot voucher that came each with my watch and the GNX375. I eagerly installed it onto my iPad, realising that I had an old account and actually also tested this briefly before, this was not a good sign, but I could not remember the details.
There are some really nice things starting up Garmin Pilot, like creating digital check lists for your aircraft. The interface is fairly clean, but has a learning curve but what I was after was the device connectivity, and there it excels. My Aera660, GNX375 and my D2 Air all connected and ready to work in unison. Things were looking pretty good. But then I tried to log a flight and work through the moving map when things came apart. The VFR map for South Africa just doesn't sit well with me. I tried all sorts of settings, colors for airspaces, different overlays, but no matter what it ended up looking like a complete unfamiliar airspace to me. Also the vertical flight profile is missing from the moving map, although you can find it on a different tab. I thought, well I can probably commit and get use to it, but what killed it was also a lack of local airfields. Just try searching for Tedderfield (FATA) or Aviators Paradise (FAAP) and it is nowhere to be found, just like on Foreflight. What else is then missing? What about an in flight emergency and not being able to find the closest suitable GA airport? The following images shows my case in point.
I desperately wanted Garmin Pilot to work, but I can't justify moving away from Skydemon and how easy and safe it makes general aviation in this geography. I did some online searching and it turns out that many in the UK (home of Skydemon) feels the same. The user group reached out to Garmin with the following feedback:
"In terms of Skydemon, we are aware of a desire, especially from UK customers to have some sort of integration with our avionics and portable units. Unfortunately because Garmin produces it's own navigation app and Skydemon is effectively unknown in the US, it's unlikely that our software developers in the US will be able to devote any time to this. I'm sorry about that, we will continue to pass this feedback to our colleagues in any case.”
There is sort of a workaround to plan using Skydemon on PC and then to send the flight plan via USB. Not ideal. It seems that Garmin is not willing to open up this integration beyond Foreflight and I find that frustrating and dare I say close to an antitrust case, similar to Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer all those years ago. I get that we're working here with primary, certified flight instruments, but one can ring fence, check and control through an API, always asking confirmation to the user, etc to make it work. No different than what Foreflight had to do, I'm sure.
So there is no ideal outcome or happy story here. I would love to use Garmin Pilot and get all the integration, but it is not good enough for VFR GA in South Africa. SkyDemon is head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to end to end experience and I believe we should not be strongarmed to use Garmin's own software just because they won't open up the integration to others.
Another workaround is that Skydemon can send a flight plan to Garmin Pilot on the same device and then you can send it from Garmin Pilot to your flight deck, but guess what, you have to have Garmin Pilot’s standard subscription, R 2 299.99 per annum, to be able to do this. And this is a very dirty and clumsy workaround.
Here is my personal comparison of the EFBs I've tested for use in South Africa follows (5 is high and a yes counts 1):
| Item | Skydemon | Air Nav Pro | Garmin Pilot | Foreflight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VFR Map Clarity | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Flight Briefing | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Aircraft Performance | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 |
| Local Airfields | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
| Airfield Charts | 3 | 5 | 2 (extra purchase) | 3 |
| Layout Customization | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Internet Traffic | No | Yes, w/other app | No | Yes, built in |
| Traffic w/device | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| JHB Special Rules | Yes | No | No | No |
| Garmin Connext | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| iOS and Android | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Flight Sim Integration | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Share live flight with family | No | Yes | No | No, but can with crew |
| Total Score | 30 | 28 | 21 | 24 |
I see many recommend EasyCockpit for South Africa based on its detailed info on small airfields, but apparently the interface is dated. I haven’t tested EasyCockpit, so I can’t comment on it.
All in all, aviation is better off in my opinion with any of these options, and better so for the competition. All of the EFB’s I’ve tested are of very high quality and each seem to be great at their own thing.
I hope that my perspective proves helpful in case you are considering using an EFB for the first time or considering to switch from what you’re using currently. All of these EFBs offer trials so you can make up your own mind. I’d love to read your view on your experience with EFBs. See you!
