Fly VFR with a chart that's always under you.

Yes. Map browsing, search, over 50,000 airports and grass strips worldwide, and airport details sourced from openAIP are free for everyone, with no trial period or account required. A Pro subscription — covering dynamic airspace NOTAMs on the chart, Planes & fleet tracking, live ADS-B traffic with photos, Airspace Explorer, route vertical profiles, airport NOTAMs, flight instruments (PFD, analog six-pack, hybrid), simulator connectivity, live weather, and chart personalization — is launching alongside the first public release. During the current public beta, all premium features are unlocked for free simply by creating an in-app account.

The Planes panel lets you manage a personal fleet of your favorite aircraft and view real-time ADS-B targets. When you tap any aircraft on the moving chart or search by registration or transponder hex, PilotCharts displays high-resolution photos from Planespotters.net, aircraft type and operator identification, and live telemetry cards showing altitude, vertical speed, ground speed, track, squawk code, bearing, and distance from your position. You can also activate "Locate and follow" to keep your camera tracking any flight.

PilotCharts is specifically optimized for iPad in both orientations. In landscape, you can pin airport details, route planning, or aircraft telemetry side-by-side with the moving chart without obscuring your flight path, with wide space for hybrid instrument clusters. In portrait (vertical), you get an expansive forward look-ahead view along your track with full Basic-T six-pack analog gauges across the bottom, designed to fit pilot kneeboards with zero control stick interference.

The Airspace Explorer lets you long-press anywhere on the chart or tap any airspace boundary to inspect a vertical column stack of every airspace layer from the surface up to upper flight levels, including floor/ceiling limits, radio frequencies, and map contour pulses. The Route Elevation Profile computes a 2D cross-section of ground terrain and airspace crossing boundaries along your planned flight corridor using GEBCO 2024 data, complete with highest obstacle warnings and interactive range sliders.

PilotCharts includes a verified registry connecting airports in over 50 countries directly to their official national AIP aerodrome charts and visual approach diagrams (such as FAA d-TPP in the US, NAV CANADA in Canada, skeyes in Belgium/Luxembourg, Avinor in Norway, LFV in Sweden, Naviair in Denmark, and many more). Tapping the chart link opens the official document directly in your browser from the civil aviation authority's portal, ensuring you always consult official sources.

PilotCharts delivers full NOTAM operational awareness both directly on the moving map and in pre-flight airport briefings:

On the moving chart: Controlled, restricted, and danger airspaces dynamically connect to official NOTAM feeds. The chart visually reflects whether an airspace is actively hot (solid outline and bold boundary highlight) or deactivated/cold (dimmed diagonal grey hatching and dashed border). Temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) and drone activity corridors are drawn as dedicated NOTAM polygons. Tap any airspace on the chart to inspect its active UTC schedule windows, effective dates, and full official text. Pilots can also enable the “Hide inactive airspace” setting to completely declutter cold military zones from the chart.

For airports: Each aerodrome panel includes a dedicated NOTAMs tab powered by FAA NMS and Autorouter gateways. Notices are decoded with clear validity date spans, categorized into active, upcoming, and expired badges, and feature one-tap coordinate geolocations that spotlight the exact affected taxiway, runway, or obstacle on the chart.

All NOTAM data is cached locally for 24 hours so you retain full operational awareness even when flying completely offline.

Yes. PilotCharts supports standard ForeFlight broadcast UDP packets over your local Wi-Fi network. Enable the simulator integration in PilotCharts Settings, enter your device's local IP into X-Plane or MSFS, and fly with realistic cockpit instruments, live terrain tracking, and route navigation right from your home sim setup.

No. PilotCharts is a situational-awareness and planning aid — a moving map over aeronautical and OpenStreetMap data. It is not a certified EFB and must not replace official charts, NOTAMs, or your aircraft's primary means of navigation.

The base map and VFR chart tiles cache to your device automatically as you view them, so areas you've already flown over keep working offline. Airport, navaid, airspace, obstacle, and elevation data can be downloaded ahead of time, per country, from the app's Data page — so a flight you've prepared for stays fully available with no signal at all.

Aeronautical data (airports, airspace, navaids, obstacles, VFR charts) comes from openAIP. The base map is OpenStreetMap, rendered with MapLibre. Weather is NOAA's Aviation Weather Center and Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD). Live traffic is streamed from the open adsb.lol network with aircraft photos from Planespotters.net. NOTAMs are retrieved from the FAA and Autorouter. Terrain elevation comes from the GEBCO 2024 Grid served by the PilotCharts backend. Official chart PDFs link out to each country's own aviation authority — PilotCharts never redistributes them.

iOS and Android, on both phone and tablet (iPad) screen sizes. PilotCharts is a native mobile app — there's no web or desktop version.

PilotCharts is currently in open public beta for iPhone and iPad via Apple TestFlight. You can download and fly with it today. While the beta period lasts, all premium features are included for free simply by creating an account. General availability on the App Store and Google Play will follow.