FAQ

A second pair of eyes on the briefing. You enter one flight; the app reads the NOTAMs, the weather, your minima, the map, the turbulence and the cruise levels for that flight, and shows what matters at your take-off time.

It is information only. The official briefing stays the reference, and the decision stays with the commander.

Airline and corporate pilots preparing a flight on a phone or a tablet, before reaching the aircraft. Instructors and dispatchers use it too.

It is not a VFR navigation app: there is no moving map of your own position.

Preflight Lens itself is not an official source, but the sources it uses are. The NOTAMs, METARs, TAFs and SIGMETs come from official aeronautical sources, and the app never adds, removes or rewrites one: it arranges them.

It is not an aeronautical information service and does not replace the pre-flight briefing required by your operator or your State. Always verify against your operator's documentation.

No. There is no account, no sign-up, no e-mail to give. Favourites, routes and settings stay on the device.

The Premium subscription is tied to your Google Play or App Store account, not to an account with us.

Yes, on purpose. Everything loaded for a flight stays on the device: NOTAMs, weather, aerodrome layouts, turbulence grid and FIR boundaries. Load the route while you have a signal; the briefing is still there in the crew bus or at a gate without coverage.

Every reading shows the time it was taken, so you always know how old a figure is.

Because the NOTAMs, the METARs and the TAFs are. The clocks, the filters and the time pickers are all Zulu.

Local time appears only where the crew needs it, in the day weather strip for the passengers, and is labelled as such.

Android, on Google Play. The iPhone and iPad version is being finalised for the App Store.

Only if you want to. With Premium, pick the airline and type the flight number: departure, destination and the day's schedule come from the airline's own departures.

In the free plan, you enter departure, destination and alternate by hand, and set the off-block and arrival times yourself. Every lens then works the same way.

From the nearest civil aerodromes, the app keeps those that are open by NOTAM at your arrival time, long enough, and above minima in the forecast. It shows the reasoning next to each proposal.

You choose, or type your own. The final choice is yours.

From the airline's published schedule, corrected by the wind of the day along the route. You can overwrite them at any time.

With Premium, the actual times of a chosen flight are shown when they exist.

Yes, with Premium. Tap ROSTER on the home screen, then Use the phone calendar: once you allow it, the app reads your phone calendar for today and tomorrow, recognises each flight from its two aerodromes and its time, and lists the legs above the flight line. The legs get the flight number and times of the day's published schedule, and one tap sets the flight.

Your roster is probably already in that calendar. On AIMS airlines (easyJet, Vueling, Wizz Air, Volotea, flydubai…), the airline's eCrew app can export your duties to the phone calendar. Roster apps such as RosterBuster, CrewLounge, BeCrew, Wingman, OffBlock or RosterX sync to it as well; RosterBuster also gives a webcal link you can paste in the settings. Otherwise, give the app a roster file: the .ics, or the HTML or CSV export of your crew portal (in eCrew: My Schedule, Print, Export). You can also paste the schedule copied from the portal, in the settings.

It all happens on your phone. The calendar is read and matched on the device itself: only today's and tomorrow's entries are looked at, only those that look like flights are kept, and nothing from your calendar (no event, title, time or note) is ever sent to us or to anyone else. To put a flight number on a leg, the app simply asks for that aerodrome's public departures of the day, the same request as Today's departures, and finds your flight in that list on the phone. The legs are stored on the device only and are removed with the app.

Preflight Lens never asks for your crew-portal login and never connects to your airline's systems.

From official aeronautical sources, refreshed throughout the day. The full text of every NOTAM is kept exactly as issued.

Some NOTAMs with strictly national distribution may not reach us. The absence of a NOTAM in the app never means that none is in force.

Red: a runway closure or a prohibition that touches your flight. Amber: a degraded aid or a restriction you must take into account. Green: information.

A closure that has been lifted reads as reopened, not as a new alarm. The colour is a reading aid, not an operational judgement.

Because the app only keeps the NOTAMs active in your window. Move the ETD by two hours and a runway work slot may fall outside it.

With Premium, you pick Now, Today, Tomorrow or any UTC time to see what applies then. In the free plan, the list shows every NOTAM in force, and a closure is still read against your time over the field.

The phase of flight each NOTAM touches. Taxiway limits sit in Ground, SID changes in Departure, airspace in Flight, ILS outages in Arrival.

The counters are always visible. Filtering the list by phase comes with Premium.

Most ground NOTAMs are drawn on a layout of the aerodrome: a closed runway, a closed taxiway portion, a stand out of use.

When a layout is missing or wrong, tap report and we fix it.

For long NOTAMs, a one-line reading of what it changes, placed above the full text. The full text is always displayed and always wins.

Tap a FIR on the map to read all of its NOTAMs, sorted like the aerodrome list.

Red when the FIR is closed and cannot be crossed, amber when it is restricted but crossable, green when it has active NOTAMs and no access restriction.

METAR, TAF and SIGMET for every aerodrome of the flight, and D-ATIS where it is published (US aerodromes). The five previous METARs are one tap away, so you can see where the trend goes.

SNOWTAM are decoded third by third, with the published text kept. US FICON and Canadian RSC too.

From the wind, the preferential runways, the NOTAMs in force and the traffic recently observed on the field. The app says which of these it used.

It is an estimate: ATIS and ATC decide.

For every runway, the head or tail component and the crosswind, from the current METAR and from the worst hour of the TAF.

Observed wind is free. Forecast wind at +1 h, +2 h and +3 h comes with Premium.

Because it is the line in force at your estimated time over the field. The report and the forecast are colour-coded against your ETD and ETA, and the full text stays.

From published State sources where their licence allows reuse “corrected” or by pilot entry.

Nothing. For take-off, destination and alternate, each runway is checked against your minima at the estimated time: visibility or RVR, ceiling, crosswind and tailwind, with the NOTAMs that change the answer quoted.

When something is not known, the screen says so in amber instead of guessing. The decision is yours.

Every aerodrome as a dot coloured by visibility and ceiling, a ring when the TAF shows a deterioration in visibility and/or ceiling, a bolt for CB. Layers for the surface wind on each runway, the model turbulence at your level and the FIR status.

The Radar layer, with precipitation and the thunderstorm SIGMETs, comes with Premium.

From the tracks actually flown on this city pair over the last seven days: the app keeps the flight closest to all the others. The turbulence profile is read along that line, in a ±20 NM corridor.

Sometimes the line stays on the great circle instead, because a typical track would mislead. The pair was flown too rarely that week, or part of the track could not be observed and was only guessed, or the route changes too much from one day to the next. Over the North Atlantic, for example, the tracks follow the jet stream of the day and spread 120 to 190 NM apart: last week's flight says little about yours.

A track known but not kept is still drawn dotted, as a hint. And if you place your own points with the pencil, your route comes first.

EDR, the unit of the reports you file: smooth below 15, light 15 to 22, moderate 22 to 34, severe from 34.

The forecast comes from a global model updated twice a day. Each point of the profile is read at the hour you will be there, not at the same hour everywhere along the track.

From the mean wind and the ISA deviation at each level along your route, against a reference level, for the aircraft category and mass you set.

It is a comparison between levels, not a flight plan. Your operator's fuel policy applies.

None of the Premium limits hides a NOTAM, a report or a minimum.

€3.99 a month, no commitment. Or €2.99 a month with a six-month commitment.

The six-month commitment is offered on Google Play in France, Italy, Spain and Brazil. Elsewhere, and on the App Store, the six months are paid in advance: €17.99.

Prices include tax in the euro area. Elsewhere the store shows the price for your country.

Seven days free, once per Google Play or App Store account. Cancel before the end and nothing is charged.

Up to three devices per subscription, used with the same Google or Apple account. A fourth device takes the place of one unused for thirty days. Erasing a device in its settings frees its place.

In the app, from the Premium screen. Payment goes through Google Play or the App Store, which issue the receipt.

Cancel at any time from your store account or from the app's Premium screen. The subscription runs to the end of the period paid. A six-month plan with commitment can be cancelled for the end of its six months.

Nothing is lost. The app keeps your Premium status for three days after its expiry date, so a renewal during a trip is picked up when you are back online.

Within fourteen days of subscribing, yes, in full and without giving a reason: use Report a problem on the order in Google Play or at Apple, or write to contact@preflightlens.com with your order number. Withdrawing during the free trial costs nothing.

After that, cancellation takes effect at the end of the period paid. For a dispute, write to us first; you may then refer it free of charge to the consumer mediator CM2C, named at the bottom of this page.

The ICAO codes of the aerodromes and the route you ask for, so that the server can answer. No position, no account, no advertising identifier, no analytics. A roster calendar link, if you paste one, is downloaded by the app directly from your portal or roster app, not through our server.

We keep aggregate counts of which countries are requested, to know where to improve coverage. They cannot be traced to a device. The details are in the privacy policy.

Your favourites, routes, settings, the minima you entered, and the last data fetched for offline use. If you use Roster, the legs of today and tomorrow taken from your calendar, roster file or calendar link are kept there too, and nowhere else. Uninstalling the app removes all of it.

Use report on the screen where you saw it, or write to contact@preflightlens.com with the aerodrome and what you expected.