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How many apps do you need for a VFR flight?

Updated August 28, 2026 · Tim Krauss

In short: A VFR flight requires about eleven tasks: route, weather, NOTAM, airspace, weight and balance, takeoff distance, fuel, flight plan, aeronautical chart in the cockpit, recording, logbook. How many apps you need for this depends not on the number of tasks, but on how many of them your main app covers. For most pilots, it's three to five tools. Two to three of them are usually replaceable, one never.

The question sounds like convenience. It is a question of workload. Every additional app means: typing the same route a second time, setting the same departure time a third time, and ending up with three versions of the same truth on a tablet, one of which is outdated and you don't know which one.

EuroPilot Connect originated from the Sport- und Segelfliegerclub Bad Waldsee-Reute , based at EDMZ, 660 meters of grass, runway 14/32, not on the drawing board of a software company. Many in the team hold a pilot's license, and flights and tests are conducted on Bristell LSA, Comco Ikarus C42 C, and Robin DR400, i.e., across ultralight and Echo class. I built the app myself, so I am not neutral. My answer to the title question for my own app is: one, and that for all eleven tasks on this list. Where prices of other providers are mentioned in the text, they come from their own order pages with a verification date; anything I cannot substantiate, I omit rather than guess.

Original view from EuroPilot Connect on iPad. Discover all 14 app views →

What tasks must a VFR flight cover at all?

Before every flight there is a duty, not a wish. According to the EU Standardized European Rules of the Air (Regulation (EU) No 923/2012, "SERA"), the pilot-in-command must, before commencing the flight, familiarize themselves with all available information relevant to the flight. The German Weather Service maintains its Checklist for Flight Preparation for a VFR Flight, and AOPA-Germany has described the same system in its Safety Letter No. 17 "Flight Preparation" (2015 edition, the system is still valid today, but you should check the sources mentioned therein).

Translated into tools, these are eleven tasks:

The list is independent of how you work through it. Whether with one app, with five, or with paper and a calculator: these eleven points apply to every cross-country flight.

How many apps do most pilots really use?

I don't have any survey data on this, and I'm not making any up. What I can describe is the stack I see on my clubmates' knees and that I myself flew with for years:

• An EFB app for route, map and cockpit, the backbone.
• An Weather app or the DWD browser page for the forecast.
• An NOTAM source, often a browser bookmark to a government portal.
• A calculation tool for weight and balance, very often an Excel spreadsheet from the club.
• A logbook, often a second Excel or a dedicated app.

That's five tools for eleven tasks. Not because pilots like things complicated, but because the stack has grown historically: the Excel spreadsheet was there before the app, the bookmark was there before the NOTAM view, and no one voluntarily cleans up a working process.

The price of this stack is not on the invoice. It's in the time that passes between windows, and in that one case where you change the route after a re-planning in four tools and forget it in one.

What does your stack of tools really cost you?

Calculate this for yourself, with your own numbers. The formula has two halves.

First half, the money. List each subscription with its annual price and add them up. Check two things that are often overlooked: how many devices the license covers (tablet, phone, and maybe a computer at home quickly make three), and whether you buy a region separately. I deliberately do not mention the prices of individual providers here. I do not have verified, current data on this, and outdated prices in a blog post are worse than none at all. Get them directly from SkyDemon or ForeFlight and enter your real numbers.

Second half, the friction. Count during your next planning session:

• How often do you type the same route or the same departure time a second time?
• How often do you switch apps to look up a single number?
• How many minutes pass between "I'm planning now" and "I'm done"?
• And the most important point: If you extend the route with an alternate airport, how many tools do you have to update so that all say the same thing?

The last number is the crucial one. A stack of five tools doesn't cost you five subscriptions, it costs you five updates per re-planning. That's exactly where silent errors occur: not during the first planning, but during the second.

Which tasks does EuroPilot Connect cover in one app?

Now for the part where I'm biased, so with open cards. This is how the workflow in EuroPilot Connect looks, task by task from the list above:

Route (1), Airspace (2), Map (3). You set the route on a full-screen map by tapping, drag waypoints, and get distance, magnetic course, and flight time per leg. An optimizer calculates on a real elevation grid and suggests up to three route variants, which it identifies as shortest, safest, and weather-optimized, navigating around controlled and restricted airspaces. The designations are comparative indications between these three suggestions, not a guarantee. The aeronautical data, including upper and lower limits, reporting points, radio frequencies, and scale-accurate runway geometry, are on the map. How the map works in flight is described in detail in the Moving Map for the Cockpit.

Weather (4). METAR, TAF, SIGMET, and AIRMET are provided as a briefing per airport, plus a narrated route briefing covering departure, route, wind, terrain, arrival, and alternate airports. On the map are precipitation radar, cloud cover, a wind field, and thunderstorm and freezing level layers. A vertical cloud cross-section shows where the base descends along the route.

NOTAM (5). NOTAMs appear geographically along the route, not as a wall of text. They are fetched and processed server-side so that the app doesn't have to retrieve them in flight.

Weight & Balance (6), Takeoff Distance (7), Fuel (8). The Weight & Balance calculator plots the CG envelope and shows live whether the center of gravity is within limits. The performance calculator automatically retrieves the density altitude from the current weather and calculates takeoff and landing distances from it. The fuel planner calculates reserve, endurance, and range. The three are interconnected: the fuel value goes into the loading, the current weather into the density altitude. So you enter the loading once, instead of typing it into three tools.

Flight plan (9). The app prepares the ICAO fields so you can copy them, and directs you to the appropriate national submission portal, including a reminder to close the plan after landing. It does not submit it not itself, more on that in a moment.

In flight (10). The moving map follows the GPS position track-up, with altitude, speed, climb and descent rate, course, distance and remaining time to the next waypoint, glide range rings in case of engine failure, and a decluttered mode. Map, terrain and airspace data come from the offline database. How this works is described in the Offline Flight Navigation.

Afterwards (11). The track is continuously recorded with full telemetry, even with the screen locked, and ends up in the logbook, which combines GPS sessions and flights synchronized via Vereinsflieger.

A few hard numbers on this, because they are verifiable and not estimated: The base map is self-hosted and covers 25 European countries. The aeronautical data follows the 28-day AIRAC cycle and updates automatically, without requiring an app update. The app costs 99 € per year for up to three devices, with a 30-day free trial. It has been in the App Store since August 5, 2026, click here to download.

What's specifically included, in numbers instead of adjectives (as of September 4, 2026):

The runway positions are not all equally good, and we state that: 2.421 are derived from official threshold coordinates, 1.609 are measured from aerial images, 347 are computationally constructed. The inventory itself, i.e., which runway exists with which identifier and length, comes consistently from KEYVAN Aviation.

Where do you still need a second app?

This is the section that product pages omit. There are things an app won't do for you, and you should know them before you clear out your stack.

• Flight plan submission remains with the authority. EuroPilot Connect prepares the ICAO flight plan and directs you to the correct national portal, but does not submit it itself. For the submission itself, you still need your country's portal.
• Official route weather is obtained from the weather service. You can get GAFOR and official aviation weather documents from the German Weather Service German Weather Service or your country's weather service. An app's weather view is a supplement, not a replacement for the official source.
• Traffic display is situational awareness, not collision warning. The app displays ADS-B traffic from the internet within a radius of about 20 NM for situational awareness. This is expressly not a certified collision avoidance system and does not replace looking outside.
• Android is not yet available. A native Android app is under development, but there is no date and nothing you could install today. If you fly Android, this calculation is currently not for you.
• Paper remains. A folded paper aeronautical chart, prepared for the route and kept in an accessible place, is not a nostalgic ritual. It's what counts when the tablet gets hot in the sun and shuts down.

Anyone who includes these five points in their calculation will not end up with "one app is enough," but with something more honest: One app plus the official sources plus paper. That's still significantly fewer than five tools, and most importantly, the remaining parts are clearly separated instead of overlapping.

Which tasks are worth combining, and which are not?

Consolidation is not an end in itself. There are tasks where combining them brings a real benefit, and there are others where two separate sources are exactly right. The dividing line runs along a single question: Do the tasks share input data?

Combining tasks is worthwhile when the same data is needed multiple times. Route, weather, fuel, takeoff distance, and weight all depend on the same three variables: which aircraft, which route, which departure time. If these are in one tool, you enter them once, and a re-planning propagates everywhere. If they are in four tools, you enter them four times and have to remember to update four places with every change. That's the real gain, not the saved subscription.

What you want to cross-check should remain separate. For safety-critical information, a second, independent source is not duplication of effort, but a verification. This applies especially to two things:

• Weather. The official aviation weather documents from the weather service are the reference. An app's weather view alongside it is useful because it's faster and more graphical, but if the two diverge, the official source wins. You want to see this friction, not optimize it away.
• The data status. If your only tool doesn't show you which AIRAC cycle it has loaded, you don't have a second instance to tell you. A tool that reveals its status is therefore worth more than two that conceal it.

This leads to a useful rule of thumb: Calculations belong together, information sources may be duplicated. Everything that calculates a result from your inputs, such as courses, times, fuel, center of gravity, and takeoff distance, benefits from being in one tool. Everything that makes a statement about the outside world, such as weather, NOTAMs, and airspace activation, can tolerate a second opinion.

How do you check your own app stack in 20 minutes?

You can do this test at the kitchen table, without buying anything and without flying. Take a flight you really want to make, say Friedrichshafen (EDNY) across Lake Constance to St. Gallen-Altenrhein (LSZR) or your home route.

1. Plan the route in your main app, as you always do. Start a stopwatch.
2. Check off the list. Go through the eleven tasks from above and note next to each which tool completed it. Mark tasks where you had to leave the app.
3. Count the switches. How often did you switch windows? How often did you enter the same information twice?
4. Do the replanning. Shift the departure time by two hours and add an intermediate landing spot. Now count how many tools you have to update so that all say the same thing again. That's your actual key metric.
5. Check the data status. Does each tool show you which AIRAC cycle it has loaded? Where it doesn't, you don't know, and that's a result, not a detail.
6. Pull the plug. Turn on airplane mode, then open everything again. What remains empty now won't work in a dead zone.
7. Add it up. Add up annual prices, add up switched windows, note the update effort per replanning.

If step 4 results in a one for you, your stack is fine, no matter how many apps are installed. If it results in three or more, you don't have an app problem, but a consistency problem, and that can only be solved by consolidating tasks.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many apps do you need at least for a VFR flight? One EFB app plus your country's official sources for weather and flight plan submission. Everything else, i.e., weight and balance, takeoff distance, fuel, and logbook, can be covered by one app, but doesn't have to be. Specifically check for your app which of the eleven tasks it performs.

Is a single app sufficient for complete flight preparation? No. Flight plan submission is done via the national portal, official aviation weather documents come from the weather service, and a paper aeronautical chart belongs in the cockpit regardless. A good app reduces the stack, it doesn't eliminate it.

Is it worth replacing an Excel spreadsheet for Weight & Balance with an app? The gain is less in the calculation itself than in the common data basis. If loading, fuel, and performance calculation use the same aircraft and the same route, you enter the values once instead of three times, and if you reschedule, all three automatically update. The spreadsheet itself, however, calculates perfectly correctly.

Can I fly safer with multiple apps than with one? More tools do not automatically mean more safety. Two independent sources for the same critical information are useful. Two tools that maintain the same flight in different states are the opposite. The decisive factor is not the number, but whether all your tools say the same thing.

What happens to my apps if the network drops during the flight? That depends solely on what was downloaded beforehand. Map, terrain, and airspace data must be stored locally on the device, otherwise navigation in a dead zone is over. The flight mode test from step 6 above will show you in two minutes which of your apps fulfill this.

Conclusion

The honest answer to the title question is not "one". It is: so few that a replanning only needs to be updated in one place. This is the criterion by which a tool stack must be measured, not the number of icons on the home screen or the sum of subscriptions.

Go through the eleven tasks, do the 20-minute test, and especially look at step 4. If you find that three tools need to know the same route, you know where to start.

More about the category as a whole can be found in the overview of the VFR app for pilots and in the flight navigation apps. If you want to try EuroPilot Connect: Try EuroPilot Connect for 30 days free, to download.