Jeppesen ForeFlight has issued a statement confirming layoffs at the company but says they’re not as drastic as some reports suggest. Here’s the statement: “Jeppesen ForeFlight made changes to streamline our operating model which will support continued investment in product innovation and customer experience. While we are not sharing specific numbers, the current percentages being relayed through media are misleading and overstated. We are supporting all affected employees with severance, benefits and resources to help them through this transition. Safety, reliability, and our customer commitments remain unchanged and remain our top priority.”
Social media reports suggest a major part of the workforce in the ForeFlight division of Jeppesen ForeFlight has been terminated, a few months after its acquisition from Boeing. The layoffs came three months after the acquisition of the two companies from Boeing by private equity firm Thoma Bravo. AvBrief has been in contact with several ex-employees who have declined to comment on record because they anticipate confidentiality clauses to be included in their separation agreements with the company. The move appears contrary to comments made by CEO Brad Surak to AvBrief in early November when the deal for the acquisition went through. See our Nov. 4 interview with Surak below
Thoma Bravo paid $10.55 billion for Jeppesen and ForeFlight and combined them into a single business based in the historic headquarters of Jeppesen in Denver. We haven’t been able to confirm it, but the general discussion among ex-employees is the layoffs resulted from the company’s decision to outsource much of the engineering activity offshore. If the company responds to our requests for comment, we will be updating this story at avbrief.com.
I predict Garmin Pilot’s subscription base will be expanding soon.
I cancelled an order for a FlyCatcher when I learned where they were going to be built. In like manner, I use a cell provider which uses US based employees (that I can understand) for the same reason. I think ForeFlight is gonna be in deep doo doo over this. You’re right … the folks at Garmin are likely smiling right now.
Guess we can anticipate GDL’s being out of stock for a while too.
Hopefully there’s a reasonable process to import logbooks over.
Why am I not surprised? Just like he said, there wouldn’t be any price increases, I had mt doubts then and still do.
No! So, you’re telling me a private equity firm let go a bunch of employees? How unusual!
Inconceivable!
You keep using that word……I do not think it means what you think it means………
Well, at least they got three new executives in there before the slicing and dicing.
… and the engineering will be outsourced to the same people who wrote the 737 MAX MCAS software ….
No way! A vulture capitalist LIED??? Who-da think it? Prepare for exorbitant price increases, nonexistent support, and a bunch of AI “features” nobody wants.
Remember Red Lobster, Sears, and Toys are Us? Well there is Garmin, Stratus EFB, and Droid EFB. The last two companies are small American companies. Both are get you there products!
This was the inevitable future, the moment a PE firm started the purchase process. The product is relatively mature, and its easier to goose profit by cutting staff and minimizing costs than trying to grow or innovate.
FWIW, my comment is not about “good” or “evil”; but a reminder that for-profit entities optimize for one thing: Profit. If customers or citizens want other factors to be considered, that has to come from outside pressure (via competition, regulation, or financial incentives to the company).
I hope the talented individuals find new employment soon; and I hope some of this talent pool gets hired at competitors – raising the bar for all of the products in this segment.
Only time will tell if Thoma Bravo is making a smart business decision, or simply exchanging a short-term / one-time ROI for a long-term destruction of revenues and market-share.
Watch prices soar. Private equity firms suck in aviation. Always looking to squeeze out the last nickel at our expense.
What amazes me is that this news still surprise people. We are in a world where honor, duties and Gentlemen have been replaced by immorality and greed at all cost.
Exactly as expected despite the previous comments by leadership.
Agree with comment above that private equity ruins things in their buying up businesses, supposedly making them efficient (ie. run horribly and alienate customers). We have seen this in medicine as businesses buy up practices and concentrate on money rather than helping people. We have seen this within the aviation publication industry with a company buying up all the periodicals and then shutting down IFR and Aviation Consumer (though with supposed plans per a recent email from the parent company to bring them back). Numerous other examples.
I subscribe to both FF and Garmin Pilot and have since they were released.
I have had excellent service from Garmin Pilot from the beginning and am on a first name basis with their tech support who answers my emails same day when I send suggestions for improvements or problems.
Even though I know more pilots use FF, I have believed for 10+ years, since they went with vector-based maps before FF, that their map is easier to read. I use it on an 11″ iPad connected to a Garmin FlightStream 210 and my 430W. With what the iPad does, there’s no reason to update to a newer Garmin navigator. I can send flight plans back and forth, enter changes to the route for weather on the iPad and send it to the 430W, etc.
Plus, Garmin’s Smart Charts are definitely leaps and bounds beyond what ForeFlight has done. I really, really like it and think it’s the most important upgrade to my flying in the last 5 years.
I would have ditched FF years ago except I am used to using it for doing my weather briefing, supplemented by EZWxBrief. The weather brief is great, while Garmin’s is 70 pages and unusable.
I too subscribe to both. Started with Garmin on an Android tablet 11 years ago, then got FF after I had Apple devices. I kept saying, “one of these days I’ll make up my mind on which one I want to keep.” I tended to use FF more, but my decision may have been made now.
+1 on Gary B’s comment…..
I am very happy I chose Garmin Pilot after getting screwed by FlyQ/Seattle Avionics with their “lifetime” subscription that really wasn’t. Looks like ForeFlight users are about to get the same treatment we got from FLyQ.
Russ, thanks for catching this, it seems typical of what investor driven industry is doing – similar to what Firecrown has done to the magazine industry. To get an idea of how they think of their customers, see https://firecrown.com/about/ , they seem to think that people who read magazines are wealthy morons who need to be stripped of their money by reading their mags. Their mistake is, in the example of Kitplanes, that they have destroyed the magazine, making it little more than an advertising rag filled with AI drivel. They will lose readership.
Just my two cents.
Oh, dear. I hadn’t looked at the FireCrown “about” page before. Such drivel!
Sadly, I’d re-upped Kitplanes for 3 years just before the implosion. I’ll leave it stand in order to have access to the back issues (and since they likely wouldn’t issue a refund anyway). Since then, Experimental Aviator here on AvBrief has delivered more useful information than the eviscerated magazine.
First, Firecrown tried to force Flying magazine on me. Second, after several objections, they finally answered me and said they would refund my unused subscription to Aviation Consumer… later telling me it was only $20…and two months later I still haven’t seen a check. Third, they’re still sending crappy Flying magazine.
I think Foreflight subscribers should get the vaseline ready.
I had a lifetime subscription to Aviation Consumer, and received nothing. I also had an IFR subscription and they sent me Flying, which I didn’t want for a couple months. They are sitting in a pile with my AOPA magazines. Too generic and not really written for someone that’s been flying for 40 years.
I just went to my ForeFlight account and turned off subscription auto-renewal. It was due to renew next week, so that won’t be happening. I’m also due to renew my Jepp subscription for my aircraft. I guess that gets turned off as well. I sent an email to team@foreflight.com and asked them to please forward to the higher-ups.
Russ, please get the CEO back on ASAP to explain himself.
How do you turn off auto-renewal?
PE executives are always lying and reneg on what they say. There probably isn’t much reason to invite them back preemptively (though if they want to come back, let them).
I’ve been with FF since their first release, but it’s time to move on… I switched my 430W subscription to Garmin last year because Jepp was so antiquated, so now that I’m going to Pilot I’m all Garmin. Hope I won’t regret it.
You won’t. See my post above, if you didn’t already read it. Garmin Pilot is great, easier to read their maps in my opinion. IFR charts (Smart Charts) is great. Consider a FlightStream 210 so that your Garmin Pilot and 430W will communicate, allowing you to send your flight plan from the iPad to the 430W when you start up, and after that to sync the devices. Being able to make flight plan changes on the intuitive interface of the iPad is a game changer.
And there goes the neighborhood. These private equity firms are just plain evil. Imagine trying to reach tech support now. “Uh, hello, please to give me your name, oh I am so happy to meet you mister Gern, how can I help you today? Oh, I am so sorry let me see if I can help you. Now, I am so sorry, what is an airplane?”
That needs to be spoken with an Indian subcontinent accent. 🙂
Are we sure they really weren’t bought by, well, let’s call them Inferno Tiara…?
Glad I have Garmin Pilot 🙂
Apparently they are moving development engineering and support to India.
Posted today on reddit:
ForeFlight laid off 40-50% of its employees yesterday
With no warning we were all fired yesterday morning via email. I would expect worsening service over the coming weeks and months, as many engineering teams who supported various features were simply removed with no opportunity for knowledge transfer. This happened due to ForeFlight’s sale to private equity (Thoma Bravo) last year, who plans to move all engineering offshore. ForeFlight was an incredible company to work for with amazing benefits and so much emphasis on pilot safety and support as well as product quality. This is a huge shame and disappointment and many incredible engineers lost their jobs.
Unmentioned, perhaps because it’s obvious, is the fact that both Jeppesen and, to a lesser extent, Foreflight, are life-critical services. Any screw ups propagate quickly to the bulk of aviation activity, including airlines and the military. Offshoring engineering of such an essential service to maximize profits may create risky vulnerabilities due to inexperience, incompetence and/or potential bad actors.
i really like this site. as a ret. a&p i fully understand what happened here. mat failure! not maint. crew.
SkyDemon
For all VFR flyers I would suggest that you check out SkyDemon.
It’s a UK based company with a total of four (4!) employees, which has a navigation solution available far superior to ForeFlight (no, I am not affiliated).
I’d say they lead the market in Europe – for a reason.
They have all the IFR waypoints, just didn’t integrate any charts for that matter.
So I do file via autorouter.aero and fly the route SkyDemon on the iPad and the plan loaded into the airctraft’s navigator.
OK, the US and Canada Charts are labeled ‘Experimantal’ for now but that will change with a growing US customer base.
They offer a 30 day free trial, and I expect you to be hooked after.
(Maybe Russ can run a featur on them?)
SkyDemon is amazing. Quick to use, clear charts with several style options. Good weather and Notam information. I use SkyDemon and Garmin Pilot, you can send your flightplan from SkyDemon to Garmin Pilot then bluetooth to the GNS Navigator with the 510 (and maybe 210). SkyDemon will link direct to Avidyne if have one of those instead. I’m UK based but SkyDemon has charts for US and Canada too,
Not a whole lot about focus on the end user in their mission statement.
https://www.thomabravo.com/about
In other words, by their statement, they are putting Americans out of work to offshore activities that could be done here at home. Perhaps notifying Secretary Duffy and the Trump Administration and learning who the owners are of Thoma Bravo should motivate them to pursue a course that supports businesses here in the US, not overseas.
Looking forward to the “What’s New at Foreflight” forum at Oshkosh this year. Suspect there will be some lively user-feedback provided. Unfortunately the presenters will take the brunt of frustration that rightly should be directed to the absent upper-management/owner.
The biggest red flag you should take away from this is that they’re offshoring development to India – this means all their engineers will be non-pilots who will not understand the product. Expect it to get a lot worse.
Foreflight prided itself for prioritizing hiring actual pilots and if they did hired non-pilots they subsidized their flight training so they understand the product better.
What happen with Hiltonsoft’s WingX, I used to use it before moving to FF, maybe I’ll go back
I too used to fly with WingX – it worked very well and the tech support was excellent. Because of a small feature, I tried IFly and like it much better.
I had been with FF from the beginning but switched to Garmin Pilot last year and don’t miss FF at all. Saved some money and a better service.
I have been a long time FF user and the main thing holding me back from making the switch to GP is how to efficiently and correctly move my entire logbook over from FF. I keep my logbook backed up in multiple places but I’m not confident yet I can move it over without losing some info. Second, I have quite a few different aircraft performance profiles created in FF that I don’t want to loose so if there was a way to easily move both of those over to GP, I’d happily make the switch. I suspect someday I may be “forced” to move to GP but we’ll see what happens. It’s a shame that the downfall of FF is upon us.
I have a G3X system and started with Garmin Pilot when I got my license. I also got FF and have used it more than Garmin Pilot. I liked being able to see traffic anywhere and the 3D flight to new airports. I will let my subscription to FF expire and start migrating to Garmin Pilot. If Garmin came out with traffic everywhere that would be great.
I really hope nobody pretends to be surprised.
My problem with foreflight was back when they eliminated live support and went to email only. I’ve demoed both Garmin Pilot and foreflight, and prefer Garmin now.. Slightly less cost and is similar to my Garmin avionics. And they have live support. (retired major airline pilot)