Some useful websites for weather and cross country planning:
Foreflight – Probably the best known app for aviation weather and flight planning. They have a website as well as the mobile app. Foreflight offers yearly subscriptions at different levels, from VFR to IFR to Air Carrier Operations. Be sure to read Foreflight’s iPad Buying Guide before purchasing an iPad for Foreflight.
Windy – Great for an overview of winds in an area and for METARs and TAFs, as well as Density Altitude, SkewT, and more. One of our favorite websites, along with the mobile app versions.
SkyVector: Provides maps and layered weather, creates and files flight plans, generate naviation logs. Great for big picture planning if you are not a Foreflight user, or you just want to do some high level planning without diving into ForeFlight. It does let you store aircraft profiles, common flight routes, can generate a Navlog, provide an official weather briefing, and file a flight plan.
1800wxbrief– the official Flight Service Website- weather briefings, file flight plans. The site itself can be quite cumbersome and non-intuitive when trying to file a flight plan and get a briefing, but the briefing information and document generated is one of our favorites.
AOPA Flight Planner – The AOPA offers a nice suite of flight planning tools to members.
ATCLive.Net – Allows you to lisent to realtime communications of AWOS/ATIC/Ground/Approach/Departure/Clearance Delivery/Tower etc. Not all airports are available, but useful to hear real-time info on winds and weather from ATIS or ATC. The radio network is run by volunteers, so sites for a particular airport often go up or down.
Foreflight – probably the best known aviation app. Offers digital charts, synthetic vision, integration with ADSB devices to provide traffic information and more. iOs (iPhone and iPads only).*
Windy – App version of their website. Available from the Apple Store for iPhone/iPad or the Google Play Store for Android.
Aeroweather / Aeroweather Pro – Detailed TAF and Metars for airports decoded. Also runway diagrams and wind vectors. Has some nice widgets for quick info on favored or nearby airports.
ATCLive.Net – Mobile app for accerssing ATCLive.Net. The user interface for it is cumbersome and not well thought out, but it can be more convenient to use on a phone or tablets than that ATCLive.net website.
MeteoEarch – Great for big picture wather overview for very long distance flight planning.
Alternatives to Foreflight
Garmin Pilot – available on Android and iOS devices. Also subscription based. Very similar in feature set to Foreflight. If you have a full stack of modern Garmin avionics, it does have great integration options for transfering/receiving data.
Avare – free Android app – “moving map” aviation GPS, A/FD and EFB.
WingXpro – Android and iOS app.
FlyQ EFB iOs app
