Another In A Series Of 'Deaths by A Thousand Cuts' For GA - NavMonster Shuts Down

While it may come as no surprise, the damage done to the online flight planning industry, first by Flightprep's aggressive legal posture over alleged patent claims, as well as the onerous potential for new and aggressive pursuance of fees by the FAA's AeroNav division for those using the taxpayer supported navigation database and associated info, has claimed yet another victim.

NavMonster -- a very easy-to-use flight planning utility available on the web, for a number of years, has shut down.

In late April, NavMonster's Marc Alexander noted that, "After long and drawn out negotiations, our hosting company booted us for consuming too many CPU cycles. NavMonster performs a serious amount of trigonometry to calculate all the airports/weather/TPPs/AFDs/TFRs/PIREPs/NOTAMs/etc along the great circle route. Moving this massive infrastructure to another server is a time consuming process. Thanks for all the encouragement and support, please stay tuned."

While a number of folks hoped that NavMonster would return bigger and better than ever, it was not to be. Last week, Marc announced that, "After a month of consideration and deliberation, it has been decided that NavMonster will remain offline. Moving the code to another server was only the first hurdle (albeit an easy one) to overcome. Faced with the upcoming AeroNav fees, and the uncertainty from last year's lawsuit shenanigans (that issue was never resolved and is still looming over our heads), it's just not feasible to continue."

Alexander continued, saying, "My sincerest apologies for not returning each query and offer personally, but selling NavMonster or placing it in the public domain is just not possible. But thanks to everyone for the words of encouragement."

ANN E-I-C Note: Again, a powerful asset for the aviation community has been allowed to wither away and die. Aviation continues to die the death of a thousand cuts while we remain aghast at the fact that the so-called aviation associations ignore the true damage being done by a number of factors that need their aggressive attention -- while instead, they keep pushing for more of YOUR dollars and crowing about great achievements (of which there is a scarcity of legitimate evidence) while forgetting the "little guy" that makes up the rank and file of aviation. What a shame... we sure wish they were more interested in doing more of lasting value to the aviation community that broadcasting, far and wide, how great they are. So... the question is this.... if the associations won't defend GA -- who will?

FMI: www.navmonster.com