Allows Company To Be An Official Internet Communications Provider, Weather Source

ForeFlight announced on its blog Wednesday that it has earned certification as an FAA Qualified Internet Communication Provider (QICP). The FAA approval letter was received on Monday of this week. The certification means that Part 121 and 135 operators may now list ForeFlight as their approved QICP, and as an official source for weather information. A small number of companies – most of them substantially larger in size than ForeFlight – hold the QICP designation. ForeFlight said it is "thrilled to be on the list."

The FAA’s QICP certification process was established to allow vendors the ability to provide meteorological and NOTAM data to pilots and operators via the public Internet. The QICP standards require that ForeFlight’s servers meet a set FAA defined performance criteria. Together, ForeFlight's web team and its weather partner – Weather Decision Technologies – have worked quite hard over the past months to ensure ForeFlight’s services meet these standards.

The application process involves submitting an application certified by a responsible official to ARS-200 containing the following:

• Service Description
• Security Plan
• Capability Demonstration Plan
• Ongoing Maintenance Plan
• Warning label

The applicant must then satisfactorily complete the capability demonstration.

Upon successful completion of the capability demonstration, ARS-200 issues a letter approving the applicant as a QICP for a period of 6 months and adds the applicant’s name to the QICP list maintained by ARS-200 on a designated Web page.

FMI: Advisory Circular, www.foreflight.com