The Reddit thread, posted to r/flying, raises a question that has become a quiet generational marker within flight training circles: at what point in a pilot's ab initio training did electronic flight bag (EFB) applications like ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot replace the paper flight plan, plotter, and E6B as the primary means of cross-country planning. The original poster describes completing private pilot solo cross-countries entirely with pencil-and-paper navigation logs and telephone-based flight plan filing, only adopting ForeFlight roughly a quarter of the way into commercial/instrument training. The post frames this not as a complaint but as an expression of gratitude for having learned the fundamentals manually before transitioning to automated tools, noting the tedium of manually recalculating fuel burn, groundspeed, and time en route whenever winds aloft, weather, or airspace restrictions changed en route.
For working pilots, this discussion touches a debate that extends well beyond nostalgia. EFBs did not merely digitize paper charts; they fundamentally altered the cognitive workload of flight planning and in-flight decision-making. Manual dead reckoning and flight log construction force a student to internalize the relationships between true course, magnetic variation, wind correction angle, groundspeed, and fuel burn in a way that clicking "recalculate" on a moving map does not. Many CFIs and DPEs have observed a measurable shift in how applicants understand navigation concepts once ForeFlight became standard equipment early in training rather than introduced later. This matters operationally: airline and Part 135 pilots who came up through the paper-and-pencil era often retain stronger manual backup skills for scenarios involving EFB failure, GPS degradation or jamming, or lost-com navigation using VOR radials — skills that regulators and training departments increasingly emphasize given growing concerns about GPS spoofing and interference in various regions.
The broader trend reflects the same tension seen across commercial and business aviation as automation has advanced from EFBs into flight management systems, autothrottles, and increasingly capable autoflight and envelope-protection systems. The FAA and industry safety bodies have repeatedly flagged "automation dependency" and erosion of manual flying and manual navigation skills as a contributing factor in loss-of-control and mode-confusion incidents. Training organizations have responded by mandating periodic hand-flying, manual approaches, and lost-navigation exercises specifically to counteract skill atrophy that convenience tools can produce. The private pilot ground school and checkride standards still require knowledge of manual flight planning and pilotage/dead reckoning precisely because examiners and training providers recognize that foundational skills matter as a backup when technology fails or is unavailable — a principle equally true for a Cessna 172 student and an Airbus first officer.
At the same time, the thread underscores how quickly the tools have proliferated and how training pipelines have adapted. Flight schools now commonly integrate ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot from day one, partly because glass-cockpit trainers and EFB-integrated avionics have become the norm in the fleet, and partly because employers — airlines, fractional operators, and corporate flight departments — expect new hires to already be fluent in EFB workflows, weight-and-balance apps, and electronic charting before day one of initial operating experience. This creates a training philosophy question with real operational stakes: should EFBs be withheld until fundamentals are mastered manually, or introduced early to mirror the operational environment pilots will actually work in? Most training providers now split the difference, requiring at least some manual flight planning exercises during private pilot training before transitioning to EFB-centric workflows for instrument and commercial phases — an approach that mirrors the original poster's own experience and that many veteran instructors continue to advocate as best practice.