Seattle Avionics

Seattle Avionics is a company that specializes in providing software for general aviation aircraft. FlyQ EFB was an [electronic flight bag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_flight_bag) application available for iPad and iPhone which was primarily geared towards non-commercial (Part 91, general aviation) aircraft use. General Aviation pilots mostly favored other competing electronic flight bags, all of which required yearly subscriptions.

FlyQ EFB Change of Terms for Lifetime Subscribers

Seattle Avionics offered lifetime subscriptions annually for black friday for many of its subscription-based products including FlyQ EFB. Eventually, Seattle Avionics would stop offering deals for lifetime subscriptions. Around September 2020, Seattle Avionics was acquired by AFV Partners.

On July 19, 2024, Seattle Avionics sent an email to the FlyQ EFB lifetime subscribers. This email started like several others announcing some bug fixes, new features, and even a new version. Below this section was a section detailing a "change" to the lifetime program:

In order to continue investing at this pace, starting today, we’re making the following changes to our Lifetime program:

1. All Lifetime customers can use the new FlyQ+ EFB 7.0 and later releases for 30 days.

2. During that period, Lifetime customers can upgrade to an annual subscription with a one-time 25% discount to continue to enjoy FlyQ+ EFB 7.0 and all other future releases.

3. In 30 days, Lifetime customers who do not move to a new annual subscription can download a forthcoming new FlyQ EFB Legacy 6.9.1 and use it for a year, after which it will be sunset. As the version number implies, FlyQ EFB Legacy is the same as FlyQ EFB 6.9.1 released in May 2024 and does not include the features or fixes in FlyQ+ EFB 7.0.

Once again, thank you so much for your support over the years. We’re excited to aggressively move FlyQ+ into the future with both defect fixes and industry-leading new features while retaining FlyQ’s famous ease of use! We look forward to you joining us on this exciting journey.

Pilots voiced dissatisfaction towards these policy changes on various general aviation forums including on Reddit, Pilots of America, and Mooney Space. AVWeb further wrote an article outlining this email. The timing was directly before EAA Airventure 2024, the world's largest event for general aviation where Seattle Avionics had their own booth. Shortly after on July 31, Seattle Avionics sent their second email updating lifetime subscribers.

We announced and released our new app FlyQ+ EFB 7.0 on Friday July 19, 2024. We also announced that we'll be releasing the FlyQ Legacy app for FlyQ Lifetime subscribers soon. Since that time, we received numerous emails from FlyQ Lifetime users, spoke to many people at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, and reviewed posts on social media. Based on the feedback we received, we are making the following updates:

• Lifetime users can continue to use FlyQ without any additional charge by downloading the FlyQ Legacy app, which we are releasing in the coming weeks. FlyQ Legacy will be version 6.9.2 to reflect that it’s based on FlyQ EFB 6.9.1 but also includes stability fixes added in FlyQ+ EFB 7.0.0 as well as fixes being added to forthcoming FlyQ+ EFB 7.0.2.

• FlyQ Legacy will load your existing flight plans and aircraft / pilot profiles as well as continue to receive monthly ChartData updates.

• We have no plans to update FlyQ Legacy after this release.

• You can trial and use the new FlyQ+ EFB 7.0 app and later versions for 90 days without charge.

• FlyQ Legacy and FlyQ+ EFB can both be loaded on the same iPad or iPhone so you can compare both apps and determine if FlyQ+ has the value you seek. If you decide to subscribe to FlyQ+, we are offering a 25% discount from current standard prices as acknowledgement of your Lifetime purchase. After your discount, a VFR subscription is $74.99 and an IFR+VFR subscription is $149.99. You’ll receive an email with purchase information shortly.

• Seattle Avionics also sold Lifetime ChartData subscriptions for Aspen, Dynon, AFS, GRT, and Honeywell products. There are no changes to these subscriptions.

Our goal is to increase the velocity of the development of FlyQ+ with more frequent releases that deliver high value and offer the best product to meet your flying requirements. Please continue to provide your feedback and help guide our road map. We will release more features over the next 90 days in FlyQ+ for you to evaluate and we look forward to your feedback.

While this did affirm that other Seattle Avionics products that also had lifetime subscriptions were not effected, the policy effectively did not change their revocation of the FlyQ EFB lifetime subscription. On October 2, Seattle Avionics sent a final update:

In our effort to communicate critical changes to FlyQ, we’ve sent multiple emails describing the new FlyQ Lifetime subscription model. This change allows us to substantially accelerate investment in the product, both improving the app stability and adding multiple new features. The proof has been a half dozen releases already this calendar year.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn’t note how the policy change was handled, and we sincerely apologize for the angst, confusion, and mistrust this has caused. Clearly, we’re better at writing software than policy statements. To that point, we’ve come up with a revised plan that we believe better portrays our commitment to the FlyQ community and allows us to continue the increased investment in FlyQ.

(+) All FlyQ customers, lifetime and annual subscribers alike, will be able to use FlyQ+. No one will be asked to download a new app.

(+) All FlyQ customers, lifetime and annual subscribers alike, will continue to get new ChartData updates and subsequent releases of FlyQ+ as they are released.

(+) The only difference will be that new features, beyond what was in FlyQ EFB 6.9.1, will only be enabled for annual subscribers. To be clear, this means that all users will continue to receive bug fixes and new releases as iOS updates are produced but only annual subscribers will benefit from the new features added in FlyQ+ 7.0 and later.

This update gave lifetime customers continued access to the app and miscellaneous fixes as the company was still active and actively developing the app, but would exclude lifetime subscribers from any additional features now included in the equivalent subscriptions today.