iFly GPS Forum

When entering airports into the flight plan, iFly will not recognize the 4-letter name (i.e., "KDTN"), only the three-letter name ("DTN").

This is inefficient, because for airports and VORs that share the same 3-letter designation (like DTN), there is a subsequent disambiguation step required to select whether you want the airport or the VOR.

To add insult to injury, once the airport appears in the flight plan, its name shows up with the 4-letter identifier: "[KDTN] SHREVEPORT DOWNTOWN".

I'd suggest making a change so that airports with letter-only identifiers could be identified using either their 3- or 4-letter identifier. This way, if you use the 4-letter identifier, it saves a couple of screen taps and some time, and if you use the 3-letter identifier, there's no change from previous behavior.

This will also help avoid confusion for folks who use panel-mounted GPS units like a Garmin GNS430 or an Avidyne IFD540, as those units require airports with letter-only designations to be entered using their 4-letter identifiers. I.e., it won't accept "TLH" as an airport identifier, only "KTLH". (Note this is true only with letter-only identifiers--for the "T41" airport, you can't enter KT41, only T41, so I don't recommend iFly allow appending a "K" to every airport out there!)

Cobra, is this behavior happening on your iFly device or tablet, and what software version are you on. This was addressed some time back. I can't duplicate your reported behavior of KDTN not being recognized as an airport.

I just tested on my iPad and V9 on my box and if I enter KDTN on the Flight Plan page it adds "[KDTN] Shreveport Downtown" immediately to the plan. If I enter DTN, I get an option of the VOR or APT, but only if I have the VORs checked on the search page. If I don't, it immediately adds "[KDTN] Shreveport Downtown". If you don't want like identifier VORs listed as an option, just uncheck the VORs box.

If I try the same for KTKI or TKI, I get the airport added immediately, as there is no like named VOR to conflict with it. This seems like the proper behavior you and Tinker described you want. The only difference is that we will all entering a three letter airport to be entered if there are no like Navaids. Lots of iFlyers are used to this behavior and would probably create unnecessary frustration to pull that out when it's not a functionality flaw.

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Shane Woodson
Vice President | Adventure Pilot LLC.

Cobra,

Ok, I was able to test on an Android device in the office and this is an Android specific bug. It is fixed in the V9 that will be coming out. It was fixed quite some time ago for iOS and iFly Devices, but it apparently did not make it into the Android build for some reason. It was probably fixed during an interim update. It is fixed for V9. I'll report to Brian to make sure this is confirmed for Android. Sorry for the frustration.

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Shane Woodson
Vice President | Adventure Pilot LLC.