What would you use today?
The only options I can think of are
Call DFS
Seriously, there is no good backup out there for generating and filing IFR flightplans, as well as for all the briefing functions out there.
Also, from experience, autorouter has been very very reliable over the last 3 or 4 years. Therefore, empirically speaking, as with GPS, there does not seem to be a need for a backup in case of a temporary outage.
Rather, for one reason or another, autorouter might disappear completely. But even in that case, I am sure things will sort themselves out in some way.
boscomantico wrote:
Rather, for one reason or another, autorouter might dispappear completely.
That is something that has had me worried, too. It is not clear what Achim’s business model is since he provides the service for free. I know that other services are using the Autorouter API — presumably for a fee — but is that enough?
Garmin Pilot?
Garmin use the Autorouter API
There is/was a company called Aeroplus but the guy (who used to post here) vanished from here a long time ago. I vaguely recall he did some autorouting development.
There is another guy who is still here who developed an excellent tool in 2008, slightly before FlightPlanPro, and as with the later Autorouter I was a beta tester for him, but he gave up the constant chase with Eurocontrol trying to block autorouting tools, c. 2010 (back then they were protecting Jeppesen and some others).
Eurocontrol offer a rather crappy “route suggest” feature but I don’t know of any way to access it apart from FlightPlanPro and even in that it mostly doesn’t work. Also it does the route only at one level, which is daft for European flying with say an Alps crossing.
Peter wrote:
Garmin use the Autorouter API
As @boscomantico wrote, the DFS Internetservice is very good to. You will get route proposals for ifr flights, and can manualy edit them, to put some directs in. I did so before the autorouter times.
Only for Germany, however, or with at least one end in Germany. Also, many feel the days of that service are numbered, due to the staffing cost. It’s like the UK version which was shut some 10 years ago.
Let’s not forget EuroFPL – they do also have suggested routes.
Aeroplus is still around and Aeroplus Flight Plan is still functional