Garmin Pilot Reviews

by Robin1032

The newest update has rendered GarminPilot useless at best, dangerous if you do not carry backup paper charts. There is no longer airport information, it will not open when selected and you cannot even get to it in the radial menu. I cannot load any airport information even if I am using WiFi. Garmin really needs to rest their updates before sending them out, fortunately I caught the issue before I got in the air. For a product that has worked well I am thoroughly disappointed, and will not renew my subscription should these issues not be addressed.

by SR22KLAX

I bought a plane with perspective + and garmin pilot was designed to work seamlessly with updates and flight plan exchange.
When the program doesn’t crash it can exchange flight plans with the panel but it’s a few swipes and clicks more than ForeFlight.
The updating of databases... SSSSUUUUUKKKKSS. after you set it up which took me 4 hours... I had to create multiple accounts with 3rd parties then activate them to work properly. Then pair Bluetooth and WiFi. Then download lots of stuff then enable. I’ve had to do this several times as GarminPilot is glitchy.
The database concierge is very confusing and has worked only a few times. I don’t even try anymore. I just use the cards.
I’ve had GarminPilot crash on me many times. Brand new iPad. Brand new download. Tried it on multiple iPads. Crash. Crash. Crash.

Honestly... it’s horrible. Sorry. I love garmin aviation. But GarminPilot , despite some clever interfaces and ideas, is totally unreliable, clumsy and confusing.

by Bulle72

I have used runwayHD and SkyDemon and for VFR flying and planning they are far superior, versatile and easy to use than the Garmin App. The simple process of importing and exporting a route between any other app (which is possible on all other apps) is not possible with the Garmin Pilot App. From a user experience point of view the interface is poor. I am disappointed as I have recently installed Garmin equipment in my helicopter and was hoping for an easier integration. They have a closed system approach. One can only hope for improvements ...

by RyanTypeDude

A little concerning that an aviation app freezes/crashes so frequently. Called support and they told me to use the Restart Option (in main iPad settings) “Switch to Map Page” as a workaround to get it out of the freeze. This worked, but after doing so, the map settings I selected were reset to default and turns out GarminPilot “backup” that it does doesn’t include these settings (so restoring the backup is worthless) so I have to redo these every time I have to reboot GarminPilot with these settings.

by Luc1234

Using high end iPad Mini 4. one generation before the current. Reset to manufacture settings to remove fragmentation to make it fast again. Yet rendering performance of Garmin Pilot is poor. Maps take sometimes 5 seconds or longer to render, sometimes track of plane jumps a mile due to lag. Touch sometimes takes many seconds before reacting. It also crashed, albeit ForeFlight crashes as well. Flight planning not as intuitive as ForeFlight. Default VFR map color scheme is way too over saturated. Unless one also invests in the latest iPad Mini 4, performance is unacceptable.

by Miamitraveler

I use Garmin in my plane and would like to continue to use Pilot for consistency, but somethings are just irritating.
Weather in Garmin pilot is not as good as the GPS or other equipment. Just cumbersome to navigate options.
Airport information is not clearly shown and you have to go through tabs to get basic info.
They have a navigation and planning mode that’s very irritating. More things to click around when you are flying.
Overall it’s not a bad product, but the flow and overall feel of the use is not even close to other options in the market. And by the way, many of this issues are recently added options that has regressed the development of the product.

by Deejayc13

Mostly I really like it. Would be nice if GarminPilot could cater for different altitudes for the programmed legs of the flight. VFR pilots often need to change altitude to avoid controlled airspace and currently GarminPilot only lets the user set one altitude for the entire flight. I have to have SkyDemon installed as well just to cater for this issue as SkyDemon incorporates this feature. I also find that Garmin Pilot is missing a lot of the smaller airfields in South Africa compared to others. Would be nice if we could add them either manually or submit a request.

by Alepm

Great app, have been using it for a while and it is an excellent tool! Having said that I live in Guatemala and there are a lot of map issues and waypoints that are in the wrong place, would love to be able to edit them and have them be in their correct place also be able to add airports that are not in the database, private runways.
Aside from this love GarminPilot !! Hope you can fix the issues

by Snowmobilejer

Read the other review that this beats ForeFlight. Well...I’m not sure what rock that person came out from other, but no way. Not even close. Garmin Pilot is a great program, and I use it as my backup in case my ForeFlight goes down, and I would be perfectly comfortable using it as my first line nav program— but why would I when I have the full ForeFlight suite. I guess it just boils down to preference. ForeFlight in my opinion is the hands down winner all the way across the board.

by Sbestcfii

Garmin Pilot was good when it was introduced and gets better with each version. I believe it has surpassed Foreflight in it’s latest releases. The planning is easier, the Home icons are easier for us older aviators, and a great feature for us IFR flyers is the auto-loading of Instrument charts for all airports in your flight plan being automatically loaded for you. I really recommend Pilot over Foreflight when I am giving instrument instruction and have e several converts. I also like how Garmin makes it’t hardware compatible with other programs while Foreflight continues to be proprietary. My students can connect to my GDL device and get all the ADS-B data. Full feature pilot is also a lot less expensive than Foreflight. Being able to run on two platforms and on three devices is also a plus.

by Rightrudder

I have used GarminPilot for well over 10 years, and to me it is the most user friendly of all. Generally intuitive, graphically and functionally superior to competitors.

One issue-several updates ago, (a couple of years, actually) the winds aloft text began using lat/long instead of station ID. I have searched thru settings, but can’t seem to change over. It is frustrating to have to consult my “stand by” app to get understandable winds aloft info ONLY.
Any clues out there?

by AdamPTK

The planning side of GP is now great with the recent additions of visual notams, graphical TAFS and the magical upgrade to Leidos briefing. The in-cockpit size of fonts and buttons is completely unusable especially when fumbling for approach plates in IMC. The fix is simple - when then pilot completes preflight and briefing and clicks FLY or Navigate mode, the HMI interface of the software should become exactly like the GNS. This would solve the basic issue that all us pilots have with GP. It’s so close to being the perfect pilot app.

by NTFSBUG

After falling in love with the gorgeous interface, maps, safetaxi, it was so difficult to leave. For a while, Garmin Pilot lacked some basic functionality that wasn’t an absolute dealbreaker, but was occasionally frustrating. The release of 10.2 was the final nail that finished GarminPilot . I can’t find a single detail I don’t like anymore. Consider this a job well done. This is better than other competitors in every way.

by N18JM

We’re all too familiar with examples of fatalities due to loss of cabin pressure and hypoxia in nominally pressurized aircraft. As a golfer, Payne Stewart always comes to my mind, but there unfortunately are many others.

Many of our onboard devices running Garmin Pilot include an atmospheric pressure sensor. For example, both my Samsung Galaxy S7 and my iPad Mini IV include built-in pressure sensors.

Garmin Pilot could easily, I believe, include a cabin altitude (pressure) monitoring function to alert the pilot if cabin altitude exceeds FAR requirements for supplemental oxygen. As an example, please see the iOS app called AvAltimeter by Aviametrix, which has some good features, but only runs in the background and won’t update pressure altitude unless it is “brought up”.

Garmin Pilot Development Team - Beat FF with this enhancement to your already fantastic software! Please help save lives!

by C172Pilot

A very good update. But they removed all of the intersections/fixes for some reason. Some of the primary ones are in there but for routing purposes, and feeding them into aircraft the GPS you have to guess or create your own waypoint. There’s not even a suggestion of the closest ones. Still needs a profile view for approaches.

by Pginz

I have been using GarminPilot since it came out. Garmin is awesome at keeping GarminPilot current. This is GarminPilot to use for flight planning and in the cockpit assistance. It is super user friendly and can be used in rough weather. I believe this is the most pilot friendly app for flight planning and actual in cockpit usability. You need to keep buying new iPads as they come out because the software is pretty heavy. It is packed with horsepower and every two to three years the processors can’t keep up. I have an iPad Pro that’s a year old and does great.

by Bkre78

I have been a long time user of both Garmin and Jeppesen. Things I like, easy flight plan changed when IFR that can be quickly sent to my gps. There things I don’t like: VFR vector maps do not have topo lines. Also VFR corridors available on TACs through class B are not available anywhere. Jeppesen VFR vector maps not available. Things I don’t like about the IFR maps: Garmin vector maps are worthless. No minimum crossing altitude points available, no VOR radial information for victor airways, MEA’s missing on some victor airways, (these are the ones I know of) and Jeppesen IFR maps not available, only the approach plates are available.

by Fly To Learn

The new update effectively blows Foreflight out of the water! Garmin pilot has integrated everything within GarminPilot seamlessly making for a very user-friendly product. Everything is easy to read and find within GarminPilot and the updated map makes it even better.

by Lgj1228

I just wanted to bring up an issue I am having while viewing winds aloft forecasts. When I slide the time blocks at the bottom over to a future block to view info, the screen will revert to the default current time block. The screen flickers slightly when it happens. If I am copying wind speeds and directions and dont catch the change I’ll be viewing the wrong info and have to slide back to the time block I was viewing. It seems to do it after about 10-15 seconds of viewing a time block. Otherwise, 5 stars.

Maybe something can be fixed in a future update.

by Schnexy829

Love it especially the information wheel around an airport!!! Easy to use, best information, do my trip planning on my phone, good customer service. The only negative is if you have three gps devices two G3X, Aera 660, and Garmin Pilot App, the annual fees, are $150 each device. I think they should have no charge, on the 3rd device…. Just saying! What do you think?

by J_ederer

I have both Garmin Pilot and ForeFlight and feel Garmin Pilot is far more user friendly in terms of the user interface. Which carries over well with other Garmin flight decks. However, I REALLY wish Garmin would incorporate a satellite map overlay as Ag and many helicopter pilots operate with reference to physical landmarks on the ground. I feel if Garmin had this feature they would be “hands down” best in the business.

by PilotTim

It’s a tight competition here with ForeFlight.

The new icing profile view is outstanding. Foreflight should take notice of this: they only just implemented airspace profile, so Garmin is a step ahead.

This would be five stars if there were some way to reduce the size of the airport icons. Right now the map just looks like a bunch of airport icons.

by Truly Yours.

For the most part GP is easy to use and a good deal of pertinent information is presented. It is easy to read and thus far I have found it to be very reliable. One of its strongest features is the coordination between an iPad and a Garmin cockpit. I would like it to follow closer to Foreflight where it comes to departures, arrivals, and easily accessible runway heading information (not just runway 03, but 034 degrees, etc), as this information is buried and in some cases not available at all. Overall, Garmin Pilot is a very good product and I will continue to use it.

by Flitetym

I find Garmin Pilot functions well, and I give it high marks for user customization — however, an attribute that I feel also makes it less "intuitive", with a somewhat steeper learning curve than FF. While users can generally find they can "jump right in" to Foreflight, Garmin's Pilot took me a day or so before I reached the "aha!" moment. (True, I admittedly had to "unlearn" FF to embrace Garmin's logic.)

So the winner is?

For the occasional pilot and "weekend warrior" (which there are many),the hat-tip goes to software producer ForeFlight.

However, for the operator with an eye towards integrating existing and future hardware additions in the vast and continually expanding Garmin "eco-system", without question, it's Garmin's Pilot.

by Aloysius Throckmorton

They read like they were written by The Hulk. “App bad, Hulk smash.”

I have been using Pilot without a single issue for three years. Garmin should have Billy D. Williams be their spokesman, because it works every time. Reading the manual probably helps, too.

by Justingraff

I have used it for at least 6 years. Great app. Constantly improving it. Has always had better map readability than ForeFlight, and even with FF’s improved vector based maps Garmin Pilot still is superior. Too numerous to count features. ADS-B weather and traffic works great. I like that they generally add features without adding multiple pricing levels. The only weak area in my opinion is the weather briefing which still just gives an DAA standard briefing, and is the sole reason I keep my ForeFlight subscription. I suspect ForeFlight will improve the preflight weather brief in the future. It even works with my flight simulator that I use to practice instrument approaches.